Animalpalooza - Brisbane Day 2

We had a private tour booked today to visit the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, the world‘s first and largest koala sanctuary, as well as other sites. The sanctuary is home to more than 100 koalas as well as other Australian species, including kangaroos and wombats.

Our guide Christine picked us up at our hotel and we headed straight to the sanctuary in hopes of securing two of the few available tickets to hold a koala. Success! We were scheduled for later in the morning giving us plenty of time to see most everything. We started out visiting the koalas, then feeding the kangaroos and the lorikeets after which we went to see various other species.

Our visit culminated with holding a koala. Brad and I were instructed how to position our hands to hold the koala so that it would believe we were just another tree. We were told to remain very still. The koala, Riley, was surprisingly light and incredibly soft. What an experience!

Once we finished at the sanctuary, we visited a neighbourhood called Paddington and had a wonderful view of the city from a café. From there we carried on to an area called Kangaroo Cliff and lunch at a place called Joey. Christine then drove us through a few neighbourhoods and finished our tour at a lookout area called Mount Coot-tha Summit.

For dinner, we walked to a neighbourhood called West End, a hip area with street art, cool cafes, indie bookshops, brewpubs, and music venues. We had dinner there at a place called The Boundary Hotel, a giant pub/restaurant that was established in 1864.

We’ve noticed that the city rolls up the sidewalks rather early. We asked Christine our guide about this over lunch and she explained that people in Brisbane tend to get up early and go to bed early. When I was making dinner reservations, I was surprised to see that most restaurants closed at 9 PM!

As we were walking home from dinner this evening, we walked by a theatre at about 9:15 pm and saw people cascading out. We saw a couple holding a program walking ahead of us, so I stopped them and asked them if they had just left the theatre to which they replied, yes. I then asked them what time the show had started and what they had seen. They said they saw the musical Chicago and it started at 7 pm. Quite different than our North American typical start time of 8 pm!Читать далее