Billabong Sanctuary
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
— George Orwell
Hmmmm. I really don’t need to write a word here because the pictures tell the story. What a place!! Billabong Sanctuary was one of the big highlights of my Australian adventure. Where else could I get up close to a koala, wombat and crocodile — and have the staff take some great pictures while I was doing it? WOW… WOW… WOW!!
I arrived thinking I’d spend a couple of hours exploring and ended up staying for the entire day. It was that good. I guess every foreigner who visits Australia has to come home with the proverbial koala picture. I had ten! Ha ha. Thankfully, the staff never got pissed at my Kubrick-like approach to photography, and I had an opportunity to get remarkably close to some of Australia’s best-known wildlife.
The koalas were particularly interesting. They had a distinctive eucalyptus smell from their diet, and because eucalyptus leaves are fibrous and low in energy, koalas spend much of the day sleeping or resting — often around 18 to 20 hours. That certainly explained why I mostly saw koala bums when I looked up into the trees during my koala walk on Magnetic Island.
“Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”
— Albert Einstein
OH… before getting to the other weird and wonderful creatures here, I promised earlier that I’d talk about what I learned about the cassowary. My first encounter with one had been in Cape Tribulation. I never expected plants — let alone birds — to become such an interesting part of my Australian adventure. I was here for danger: crocodiles, snakes, sharks and spiders. But the cassowary definitely deserved some attention.
It’s a large, prehistoric-looking flightless bird with powerful legs, sharp claws and a distinctive helmet-like casque on its head. Even more fascinating is its role in Queensland’s tropical rainforests. Cassowaries eat a wide variety of rainforest fruits and disperse their seeds over considerable distances, including some large seeds that relatively few other animals can handle. They are an important part of the rainforest ecosystem. WOW!!
I also got to hold a juvenile crocodile, which caused me some concern because I had been warned that this particular little guy was a known finger-biter. My eyes never left those jaws. Just when I thought holding the crocodile was dangerous enough, I was introduced to one of Australia’s extremely venomous snakes. This one, thankfully, was safely behind glass.
The kangaroos were pretty docile — thankfully not quite as docile as the unfortunate animals I had been seeing along the roads while driving south. Some of those were probably wombats or wallabies. It wasn’t always easy to tell by that point.
