Koala Land
Thursday, May 26th, 2005Today we continued our journey to the north coast of NSW. In the way, we crossed the land of the Koalas, where there are more Koalas than anywhere else in the world.
The Koala is a very funny animal. It is a small bear-style creature, which lives approximately 10 years, all of them on a eucaliptus tree. Every Koala chooses its 4 waking hours in which it is active (either day or night, doesn’t matter to them), and sleeps for the rest 20 hours every day. During those 4 hours it eats the leaves of the tree it lives on, and that’s about it. Ain’t it a wonderful life?
We’ve seen, and touched, Koalas at the Billabong Koala Breeding Center, where they breed Koalas for some reason. It is actually a very nice park, something like a small zoo, and it also hosts many other Australian animals: from Casowary (a big bird, size almost like an ostrich but looks more like a huge turkey) to spider-monkeys, to many kinds of parrots (e.g., Galla pink parrots), to Wombats (something in the middle between a Koala and a Bevar), to Emus, and of course - Kangaroos, both normal (several species) and albino ones. We gave the Kangaroos some food (corn seeds), and they came and ate from our hands - we even gave them a hug! The kangaroos have furs similar to dogs, very nice and good to touch. The fur of Koalas, though, is much more rigid-like and not that soft (although it is also very nice to pet with).
Besides playing with those lovely animals we also had an attraction at the spider-monkey’s cage. The monkeys were having sex, and during the show they were re-inventing major parts of the Kama-Sutra. For example, in substantial parts of the act one monkey was hanging on using only its tail. Most acrobatic indeed.
We drove today a few hundred Kilometres to the north, all of the way was inside forests and high bush, many eucaliptuses and rivers crossing every now and than. I must admire the highways here. The australians keep excellent roads. For example, every few kilometres in their highway there is a special route if you need to turn back. There are also excellent resting points along the way, and road signs. They also have very effective adds against high speed. They have enormous fees here (If you get caught driving too fast you may have to pay more than 1500$) and they keep publishing it in every possible place.
