2019/11 Australia trip - Healesville Sanctuary |
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Monday November 4th
It was another bright morning, but the weather forecast was dismal, rain all afternoon. I suggested going to the Healesville Sanctuary, really a zoo of Australian animals. The animals are mainly outside but I remembered there were some indoor exhibits, though not nearly enough as it turned out.
We had lunch in Healesville at a bakery, an expected location for cafes in Australia. The rain began as soon as we entered the sanctuary, but we tried to ignore it.
We were most interested in those animals we haven’t seen in the wild, like cassowaries and bilbies and Tasmanian devils and tree kangaroos, but it was good to see others in close-up. The first we saw were this cassowary and a pair of emus.
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Healesville Outside (5.19) |
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As usual it was the birds that were the stars, easier to see than most of the marsupials. This ibis is relatively common in Australia but always catches our eye as its bill is so distinctive. It’s curved so the ibis can probe for its favourite food, crayfish, but as you can see the bill makes drinking difficult
The colourful birds on the left are the green parrot, emerald dove, and the 
galah. On the right are a white-headed pigeon, a lyre bird, and a brolga.
It was noticeable that kangaroos don’t like to be out in the rain any more 
than we do and they were mostly gathered under their shelters. The one on the left is a tree kangaroo.
There were a couple of inside exhibits for the platypus and for other nocturnal marsupials. 
Both were lit for the animals’ comfort rather than the photographer’s so there were no clear pictures. The platypus looks like a diving duck as it hunts for yabbies (crayfish); their skeletons littered the pool. The bilbies and similar marsupials were a little easier to see, illuminated by a dim red light. I’ve filtered most of the red light here to show the bilby’s cute ears. The Aussies have an Easter Bilby rather that an Easter Bunny.
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Healesville platypus (10.57) |
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Birds & reptiles (12.15) |
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Bilby & possum (4.49) |
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Outside, the rain got heavier and the sky darker, obscuring the colours of the birds. We had a good 
view of the koalas and the Tasmanian devils; they don’t seem bothered by the rain. This koala bore a startling resemblance to the late English comedian Charlie Drake.
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Tasmanian devils (3.32) |
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Birds & koalas (4.20) |
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The reptiles had their own area in the dry and warm. I’ve patched a few of their images into this composite, but I 
don’t know them well enough to identify them all.
Despite the rain we stuck it out until closing time and still hadn’t seen it all. The same thing had happened to us on our first visit in 1995 and our second with Karen and Stew in 2002.
John and Edna look as damp as they did when they came to BC for the Alaska Trip.
We went for dinner at the Sandown Greyhound Racing Club. The road was torn up so we had to detour to get there, and then we found out that the road had been torn up because the club had no water, and the restaurant was closed. Instead we went to the nearby Highways club. We were to eat at many similar places over the next month: golf and bowling and servicemen’s clubs. Although locals have to be members to eat and drink there, visitors just need to declare that they live out of town; some clubs have machines to read driving licenses and verify non-residence.
I guess that these places grew out of England’s social clubs, with the Australians adding a restaurant and casino (called the Pokies). Meals have to be ordered at the desk but the staff deliver them to the table. Prices of meals and drinks are a bit lower than regular restaurants, and in many smaller towns the club may be the only place for an evening meal. Cuisine is usually Chinese, sometimes with a limited choice of western meals. Some have senior’s meals, but we found even these to be too large for us and Sandie and I were soon sharing our dinners.