Up at 6:30am, and after having a shower and eating breakfast we packed up the van and left the campsite by 8am. After one hour on the Bruce Highway driving north we stopped at a town called Bowen, where Ben got his next picture with a ‘big thing’, this time a mango!
A quick stop at Mcdonalds to use the free wifi and we were back on the highway driving north to Townsville; 17kms south of which we stopped and visited the Billabong Sanctuary. When we got in the crocodile feeding had just started, and it was then we realised that this was a small scale version of Australia Zoo…with a fraction of the visitors!
We had a wander around the sanctuary, which housed only Australian animals in open plan large pens, that we had no trouble getting close to. It also had Kangaroos running around loose, most of which were mothers who had small Joeys in their pouches.
We went into the pademelon (small kangaroo) enclosure and sat feeding them.
And then went round to the Koala interaction….where we were lucky enough to be 2 of 4 people there for the talk, and better still we were only 2 people there for the wombat interaction!!
Nicola now says…i want a wombat for Christmas please!!!! Ben doesn’t though, as it tried to eat his toes right after he took the below picture….do you see the evil glint in his eyes!
Next it was a whirlwind as we followed the guide around for all of the afternoon shows, where we were 2 of only 8 people in the whole sanctuary, so it felt like a personal guided tour! We fed the cassowary, watched the dingos being fed, and then held a croc and snake!
At 4pm it was time to say goodbye to our new friends; Tonka the wombat, Yoda the crocodile, and Ossie the python. We drove the 40kms to our free campsite for the night that was on Saunders Beach, we got there just in time to see the sun set.
While we were having a glass of wine we were invited by a local to go to the local community centre that night for cheap pizza, beer and Avatar…so off we went and met the locals!!
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