Today I got to
cuddle the koala, feed the emu and pet the kangaroo - and none of these are
smutty euphemisms. The highlight of the day was visiting a koala bear
sanctuary. The sanctuary was set up in the 1920s with two koala bears, and is
now a quite impressive facility with a variety of native Australian wildlife,
including a number of koalas, emus, kangaroos. As I mentioned above,
conservationists are trying to get better protection of koala bears because
numbers are dwindling, but are facing fierce opposition from developers who
don't want pesky koala habitat stopping then from building that hotel, or
housing estate. Climate change predictions for Australia, and models of
patterns of habitat loss, currently don't paint a rosy future for the koala.
Koalas are as
squishy and cuddly as they look by the way, although not terribly bright, and
smell faintly of Vicks vaporub. Their babies are called joeys, like those of
kangaroos, which was news to me. And talking of kangaroos - they have a coat a
little like a German shepherd, and the one I petted pretty much just acted like
a dog, rolling over to let me scratch it's belly. But one beastie I really
wanted to see was the platypus. There was one at the sanctuary - called Barack
- and he was adorable. Like an otter wearing a Donald duck mask and scuba
flippers. Unfortunately I couldn't get a great photo as he hid in a little
underwater cave most of the time. Anyway, a ridiculously cute creature even if
all the other species laugh at it for looking like a doofus.
Also during the
day I visited the University of Queensland - a pretty looking university on the
river, consisting of an eclectic mix of architectural styles from impressive
sandstone neo-classical halls to shite 1950s concrete monstrosities. It has a
similar number of students to my university, except they have the proper facilities
and infrastructure for a school that size. Gossiping with the faculty and grad
students there, their complaints about administrators being incompetent, petty,
spiteful politics amongst faculty, lazy and entitled undergrad students, pretty
much demonstrated that universities are much the same everywhere.
A college at the University of Queensland
As I said, we
did get to see a lot of venues, and the day ended with drinks in the modern art
museum, and dinner on the river front - an excellent little Italian restaurant
with a delicious gnocchi and a great selection of wines. So we spent the
evening there chatting about growing up in the UK (I was with a couple of
ex-pat Brits), stories about stupid things people has done at conferences, and
as I had been the only male amongst a huge gaggle a female events planners, I
found myself again providing sage advice about how guys think and behave - with
one of the big themes being why men never read instruction manuals, and how
they always have to "fix" a problem instead of listen - so I feel
another blog posting coming on soon.
If you've been
following this blog, you'll know that I was supposed to have gone to Australia
before, but it never happened. So although it was only a flying visit, it was
great to have finally got here, and despite the jet lag, it was worth it. Now
to go back home, and sleep for a week.
Afterword
At breakfast just
now my travelling companion/colleague reminded me of one of her favorite
activities from yesterday – the miniature horse show (like a donkey show, but
more upper middle class). It didn’t really do it for me – we used to have a
Shetland pony when I was a kid, and although it looked cute it was a psychotic,
mean creature – not unlike a couple of exes. I am feeling a little guilty about
spending over $100 on toys in the sanctuary shop though. The largest purchase
was a 3’ stuffed platypus, which was ridiculously squishy and last night used
it as a neck pillow, but woke up hugging it. So I had to slip out of my room
quietly with my bags to check out and get to breakfast - I felt a bit of a cad, but I left some cash on
the nightstand for her. Adios Oz.
No comments:
Post a Comment