More Fun with Animals

It's well known that there are lots of crazy animals in Australia.  So, here's a rundown of some of our other animal encounters.  The first bunch (including the crocodile from the last post through the snake) were at an animal sanctuary on Magnetic Island.

We got to hold this turtle, but we've also seen several in the ocean popping their heads up for air.  Turtles will also reappear later in this post.

This cockatoo will eat sunflower seeds right from your lips.

Here's a bearded dragon hanging out on my shoulder.

The main atraction at the animal sanctuary is holding the koalas.  This koala was pretty chill and just hung off us like she didn't have a care in the world.  They are soft  but kind of wooly.  It's a misnomer that eucalyptus makes them high all the time, it just doesn't have a lot of energy in it so they sleep most of the day.  Nobody else really wants to eat it though so they always have a food source.  It's funny how these photos sort of look like high school portraits except with a koala.

Koala close up!

Christiana working on her Britney Spears impersonation.

The elusive cassowary in the Atherton Tablelands.  Chrissy saw this but I never managed to spot one.

Cockatoo selfie at our hostel in Airlie Beach.  There were almost always a few hanging around.  It has a cracker Chrissy gave it in its claw.

Finally, these are just hatched baby loggerhead turtles on Mon Repos Beach.  You reserve a ticket in advance and show up to the beach at 6:45 PM and they bring you down when they start hatching.  They say sometimes you could wait until 10:00 or 11:00 or have no hatching at all in a given night, but they called us down almost immediately after we arrived which was cool.  This was the only photo we were allowed to take. The turtles pull themselves up out of the sand and tumble down the sandy hill at the top of the beach and then (after being briefly corraled by the park ranger for us to see) gun it across the sand for the water.  On average there are 127 turtles per nest so you see lots and lots of little turtles racing by.  30 years later females will return to lay their eggs at the same beach.  The whole thing is like something out of a nature documentary that you can't believe you are actually seeing in person.