Healesville Sanctuary

If you are ever in Melbourne and only have time to visit one zoo-type attraction, Healesville Sanctuary is the one to pick.    There are three large animal attractions in the area - the Melbourne Zoo, which is terrific, Werribee Open Range Zoo, which is African animals, and the Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary is exclusively Australian animals.  They take in endangered, injured or orphaned animals, rehabilitate them, and are often able to re-release them into the wild.  It's a large place - we got through about 60% of it on our visit.  It doesn't look like a typical zoo because there are trees everywhere, so you just feel like you're on a walk in the bush.  But it's really well-signed and there are tons of great volunteers to give you directions so you never get lost.  The volunteers are also a wealth of knowledge about the animals too.

There were lots of opportunities to interact with the animals close-up.  The kids were able to feed the parakeets and pet a wombat.  Other options were to pat the kangaroos or the dingoes ("not recommended if your children are nervous around dogs" - the children!!), or attend a koala feeding.

There's a rehab centre at the sanctuary that visitors can visit, but we didn't get to it on this trip.  We saw so much in four hours, and were pretty wiped out by the end.

Baby Emus

Mama Emu

Koala

Wallaby

The wombat was very cute and cuddly.  She was rescued off the side of the road; her mum had gotten run over.  She was "adopted" by another female wombat at the sanctuary.

The kids were allowed to feed the lorakeets nectar.  We could see their little tongues going in and out of their beaks licking up the sugar water.

Sleepy dingo.  Isaac said, "Let's wake him up."  I said, "Mmmm . . . I don't think so!"

Then there were the lizards and snakes - we were able to get really close to them all.

Goanna

Some sort of scary python

Frill-necked lizard

This was the first Tasmanian devil I'd ever seen awake during the day.  She was taking care of some babies, so like all other mums, she was up at all hours.

Forgot the name of this endangered bird; it was eating a dead mouse.  Pure entertainment for the littles.

Many trees were labeled with their ages.  Most were much, much older than me.  This one was super impressive.  We learned that eucalyptus trees reproduce with wildfires - the seed pods open only under intense heat, and germinate in ashes.

To end, just a few fun photos:

Campaign to use half-flushes and recycled TP.  Very Australian - both the message and the language.

Wood, life-size replica of a dino from Gondwana.

Don't worry, she's fine.