Healesville Sanctuary

We finally decided to stick to our plan of going to Healesville Sanctuary today. We woke up a little earlier and hoped to get there earlier and potentially even make it back a little after lunch. We headed out a bit before 8:30 am and were in Healesville a little before 10 am even though a good part of the route was on city streets on the "Maroondah Highway." Still, it was clear from the empty parking lot that we were one of the first people there.

The kids were free (it's a special "school holidays" promotion that is fortunately just running over about two weeks). Since I was offered a "concession" admission at Ballarat because the lady at the Gold Museum happened to see my University ID, I showed the lady the ID and asked if the U of M ID would get me a concession even though it was not Australian. She checked with someone and said "yes." I wish I had tried that earlier. The kids and I had also done some scoping out of their web site before we got to Healesville and had decided to purchase some "magic moments" tickets for $10 each (so $30 for the three of us for each of the "magic moments" encounters we wanted). Basically, these tickets give you closer access to the animals in a small group (only 5 people per group). We decided on these close encounters with wombats, koalas, and reptiles.

We started with the wombats. We were led through the wombat enclosure to a smaller area at the back where two young wombats were playing. We were given some food and allowed to feed the wombats and pet them. The ranger was fun, friendly, and very informative. We spent a good twenty minutes playing with one of the wombats (it was just the three of us who had signed up for the first encounter of the day) and really enjoyed interacting with the cuddly, friendly, and hungry wombat.

Our next close encounter (with the koala) was over an hour later and we spent the time walking around the park. It really is more of a wildlife park than a zoo. Most of the animals are in open areas with very few cages. There are ropes to mark the paths and different animals are in different zones, but on the whole, you get a sense of an open area. While walking through the "wetlands track," for example, we turned a corner and right there in the middle of the path was a kangaroo that stood and stared at us inquisitively before bounding off. In the large and open aviary, we had to watch out for the tiny birds on the ground to avoid squishing them. Sheila even accidentally kicked one of the birds when she turned around. We came face to face with a flock (?) of massive pelicans that were right there - nothing to prevent them from walking up to us and taking a big bite out of one of us. This made for a very different animal experience than one you would find at a zoo. Healesville also focuses exclusively on native Australian animals which made it a better bet for overseas visitors like us. I mean, who ants to go to Australia and see a zebra?

The koala encounter was different in that we weren't allowed to actually pet the koala. But, we could get as close as we wanted and practically go nose-to-nose with it. The koala simply slept on the branch of a tree a few inches away from us as we oohed and aahed over it. This time, there were three other people in our group. We initially politely took a few photos and moved away to make way for these people. But then, they just dominated the space and took photo after photo after photo. Even when they were done with the photos, they would not really move away from the koala to give us another shot at getting some more pictures next to the koala. We should have been a little more aggressive, but it probably was not worth it. They kept going until the ranger said that we could take a couple more pictures and had to go. Even then, those people insisted on going on and on without giving us another opportunity to really get close and go face-to-face with the koala. But, we did get plenty of shots and enjoyed our time being so close to the koala.

We then attended a spectacular bird show which had everything from ultra-colorful parrots to massive raptors flying right over our heads. It was quite a spectacular show and the crowds that packed the outdoor arena suggested that this is well known as being a "can't miss" event at the sanctuary.

Our "magic moment" with the reptiles was a little disappointing to me. We got to hold (mainly just the tail) of a python and that was about it. No real close encounters with the many venomous snakes or other reptiles of Australia. Since I had held snakes before, this was not much of an encounter and I would advise future sanctuary goers to skip that one. Even so, the kids had so much fun that we decided to go back and sign up for another magic moment (yes, at $30 a pop) with the kangaroos. We hoped that the kangaroo encounter would be more like the wombat encounter than the one with the reptiles. Since by then the earliest slot was for 3:45 pm, we used the time to grab lunch and thoroughly explore those parts of the park we hadn't yet gotten to see. We loved the "Land of Parrots" and even managed to get one to sit on our arms and eat out of our hand. Have I mentioned that the large open aviaries are amazing?

By this time, there was a steady light rain that had all but cleared out the park of visitors. Fortunately, the rain let up a little bit when we headed to our kangaroo encounter, but started again while we were in the middle of feeding and petting the red kangaroos. But no one seemed to notice. The ranger also seemed to be in a better mood now that the crowds had thinned and she was generous with her time and her willingness to give us food to feed the kangaroos. This really was a lot of fun and we spent quite a bit of time feeding the kangaroos and petting their soft fur. We were told to only feed the females as they were less aggressive than the males. It turned out to be well worth the additional money and the rain could not dampen our spirits as we headed out to the parking lot for our drive home.

We stopped by a laundrette in the evening as we were low on clothes and picked up some takeaway at a Vietnamese restaurant in the vicinity. We did the laundry, grabbed our dinner and headed back to the hotel to eat, watch some TV, do some "blog catching up" and then go to bed.