May 27th: Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary

Day 54 (Day 29 in Australia)

With everyone else at work, Julie and I had the car and planned to do various things in the Yarra Valley. Admittedly we were a little later leaving that planned but in the end we only did the first attraction on the list, spending almost 6 hours at the excellent Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary. 

We saw a lot of animals close up, some of which were had never seen live before and a few which were completely new to us. 

The early bird of prey flying display was sadly cancelled as there were 2 wild (and very large) wedge-tailed eagles circling overhead eyeing up the stars of the show. We missed the 3pm show as we were watching something else even better.

I’ll be brief as it’s late. We saw: koalas, echidnas, kangaroos, wallabies, emus, tree kangaroo, platypus, wombat, red-bellied pandemelon, goanna, dingo, Tasmanian devils, noisy pitta (yes, really!), satin bowerbird, regent bowerbird, pelicans, kookaburra, tawny frogmouth (not making this up!), bilby, long-nosed potoroo and the unexpected star of the show just before we left… a lyrebird. 

I’ll add more about the lyrebird tomorrow but suffice to say Julie took a 7 minute video of my encounter with this amazing bird. 

Here are a few of the 200+ photos we took between us:


Echidna

Tree kangaroo



Noisy Pitta




Regent Bowerbird

Tasmanian Devil - very cute actually!

Wombat

Long-nosed Potoroo 

Dingo (very dangerous)

“Superb Lyrebird” - and he was.

Favourite parts of the day: the platypus, learning that the girl in charge of the Tasmanian Devils is “The Devil-Keeper” and the lyrebird but you’ll have to wait to learn why as it’s nearly midnight and I’m tired!

[not proofread yet!] 

[28/05 7:30pm Aus time: it has now!]


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