Great full day exploring the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary with some up close encounters with some of the animals.
Photo Gallery: https://pics.mattichan.com/-uwc093
Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary
Woke up and headed to Lone Pine for a couple encounters I had booked a couple months ago. Wanted to make sure I at least got to see a koala, even though I was hoping to (and did) see a koala in the wild yesterday.
Owl Encounter
My first encounter was booked right at park open, and it was an owl encounter which was SO cool and fascinating. Got to meet some of the owls, and even help give one of them some practice of flying to and from a nearby branch.
I kid you not, the eyes on these owls are SO brilliant and I could’ve lost myself gazing into them for hours. The handlers were all so good and really know what they’re doing as well. A great start to the day.
Wallabies
Right after the experience, I turned around and there were several wallaby just chilling in the grass nearby. Enjoying some morning sun and breakfast I suppose.
Lorikeet
My koala encounter wasn’t for another hour, so I wandered around and ended up watching some wild lorikeets come down and get a little bit of a feast. Fascinating that they just know what time of the day it is and where to go to get some (milk?).
So pretty though, and really fun to watch them interact with each other and fly around.
Koalas! So many Koalas
We started the koala experience, and was surprised to find SO many koalas everywhere. As we watched and learned more about them, they really are so pampered and kind of pathetic (but hey, if you can get the job to just chill all day, have food brought to you and sleep all day, wouldn’t you do the same?).
They are remarkably cute though, and almost reminds me of watching pandas back in the day, also cute, incredibly lazy and food motivated #goals.
Particularly liked the 3 koalas climbing over each other and sharing a branch, one big ball of fluff.
Backstage
We got to go backstage a little bit to see all the foliage they have to prepare fr the koalas and what goes on behind the scenes which was fun. Really enjoyed seeing the way they measure the koala’s weight. Instead of trying to get them to sit on a scale, they have this fake branch thing that they can use to trick the koala into getting weighed (as if they were just sitting in another branch). Fascinating, and genius.
Big fan of a double decker…
Koala Experience
The highlight of the experience, was getting to hold a koala. True to form, I already forgot his name (like 30 seconds after getting introduced). I wanna say it was something like Jasper, but I’m pretty sure I just made that up. For now I’ll call him koala.
Really interesting that they actually have to time all their encounters so that each koala is never “working” more than 30 minutes a day, starting from the moment they climb out of the tree to the handler’s arms.
So cute, pretty fluffy actually, and actually about as heavy or light as I internally thought it would be.
Lizards and Crocs
After the koala tour, wandered around the rest of the sanctuary just observing the wildlife.
Dingo
Poor dingos were not amused (it was definitely getting hot), neither of them had any desire whatsoever to run around today, but the area was decently sized for them to be able to go from enclosure to enclosure (and even go up to some elevated ramps).
Roos
Finally wandered over to the massive roo enclosure and saw so many roos everywhere.
Joey’s (Baby Roos)
Did get to see a couple joeys that were still in pouch, although one definitely looked like they’re about to outgrow the pouch. So cute, fascinating and also some of those positions do not look comfortable for either the momma nor the joey.
Emu’s
Couple more emus wandering around and people were feeding them as well (not something that appeals to me whatsoever….I’ll observe from a distance).
Other Animals
Flying foxes, falcons, turtles and maybe one of my favorites, the platypus….don’t know what I was expecting, but they’re a lot tinier than I imagined, and they’re also freaking fast.
Bird Show
Got to the bird show and snagged a decent seat for some photos, and really enjoyed watching the birds do their thing. They are so fast and elegant.
Tree Kangaroo
As I was leaving, walked through the marsupial portion of the sanctuary and most of them were not around (I assume, they were in the burrows hiding from the heat). I did find a tree kangaroo though, way up in the tree. Fascinating.
As I waited for my uber, saw a couple sculptures in the garden which I thought were pretty cool as well.
Into the City
I kinda forgot I had booked an AirBnB experience to do some pottery at a class, but headed into the city, and got there to find that it was a pretty big plaza / mall space. I wandered around for a bit trying to find the studio.
Claw Machine…Snacks?
Was amused to find a whole bunch of claw machines, but instead of toys and stuffed animals, etc, they were filled with snacks! *Almost* wanted to give it a go but ended up passing.
Boba Machine. The Robots are coming.
I did stop to grab some boba though, since I saw this boba machine. Fascinating, and the robots really are coming for all our jobs (mostly kidding). Boba itself was actually pretty good.
Pottery Experience
In my mind when I booked this, I thought it was going to be like an actual class, but I ended up just getting a block of clay, some laminated sheets to learn on my own and just got to mess around for a couple hours. Wasn’t really sure what to make, so I ended up making a koala of a picture from the morning, and then still had extra clay, so made a little lotso as well.
The clay itself dries really fast so had to keep adding water and messing with it but at the end of the day was more like just playing with some playdough. Oh well, they can’t all be winners. At least I got to go into the city and explore a bit.
Dinner
Wandered around for a bit going to some electronics stores to grab some additional batteries for my cameras for the upcoming Indonesia trip. Afterwards, went back to the food court to grab some food while using the mall wifi to upload some photos.
Vibe Check
5 parts joy
Feedback
Leave a comment or question if you have any thoughts! Anything you want to know about as we go around the world? Any things you want to share as feedback, or any images that particularly spoke to you. I’ll try to read all of them as time permits!
Matti 
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