Koalas Galore!

Sunday April 2nd – We left Cowes, the beachfront city on Phillip Island, after a tasty breakfast at our B&B and running a few errands. Tried to hit the internet café, but it was closed as many places are on Sundays. We drove across the island to the Koala Conservation Centre. The Centre has built boardwalks above ground so you are more level with the koalas for better viewing. You can also walk around the small park and try to locate any one of the number of koalas who are free to roam within the park confines. It was a nice walk in the park and quiet as not many people were there. All the koalas we located were sleeping, s it wasn’t as exciting as yesterday’s viewing. Koalas spend about 20 hours a day sleeping so that’s mostly what you get. We continued our leisurely drive back to Melbourne stopping at the “Maru Koala & Fauna Park” about 20 km from Phillip Island. It was very similar to the Wildlife Wonderland from yesterday with koalas, wombats, kangaroos you could feed, and dingoes (no giant worms). This park actually had two Tasmanian Devils and we happened to arrive in time to see them being fed. The two were separated as the keepers explained they had been fighting too much. They each got about half of a raw chicken and their jaws are incredibly powerful. They crunched right through the food in less than 5 minutes. The kangaroos at this place were much smaller (and less intimidating).

We did some more shopping on the drive home, tried to find an open internet café (no luck) and got back to GDV at around 4 pm. Back to class tomorrow, hope we get some sleep!