Have You Seen or Touched a Koalaby?

After a very nice breakfast we headed back to the river to catch the Miramar tour to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. The Miramar is a very nice ferry build back in the 1920's to take Brisbanites to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary back before there were decent roads. Now the Sanctuary seems to be located in the suburbs and is surrounded by very expensive property.

From the river we saw the Fourex (XXXX) brewery, the Cauldron (home of the Brisbane Lions AFL team), 100 year old fig trees, thousands of flying foxes (very large bats), a suspension bridge build with leftover cable from the Sydney Harbor Bridge with an apartment in the abutments that you can rent, and a wild python resting in the trees.

The Sanctuary is one of a handful of places in Australia where it is legal to hold a koala (so we were told). The 130 koalas are so accustomed to human handling that anyone willing to buy a photo (starting at $16.00) can say they cuddled a koala. Cheryl had the honor, but we were all able to get together to have our photo family photo taken. Molly was slyly able to pet the koala while we were waiting for the photographer. Molly understood that they are not 'koala bears', but cannot stop calling them a 'koalaby'. Her new Australian nickname is 'Mollaby the Koalaby'.

We also saw a pair of Tasmania devils fighting over a carcass (see the video), dingos (and no they didn't take our baby), more koalas, a

wombat, two crocodiles, a padamelon, and dozens of kangaroos that allowed Cheryl and Molly to pet them. Unfortunately, they did not have a platypus.

The ride back to uneventful, but since we were on the other side of the river we walked over to Brisbane's South Banks. It is a stretch of riverfront that hosted the 1988 Brisbane World's Fair, but has since been turned into a riverwalk with restaurants, playgrounds, some shops, and a big beach that was built away from the river. It is also home to Griffith University, a school for the performing arts, and a state museum (they currently have DiVinci's Machines exhibit and a traveling collection of American Impressionism

and Realism...of course).

For dinner was picked up a couple of pizzas and some Toohey's Dark Ale. We made it all the way until 7:00 before we crashed. At least this time we were able to watch the sun go down.