Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

Today is marsupial day on the blog! Heaps of pictures of cute furry friends!

We visited the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane, the only place in Australia where you can cuddle koalas. Holding big Byron for 20 entire seconds has its price, 16 dollar to be precise, but aren't we adorable together?? 

Apart from koalas there are plenty of other Australian mammals, birds and reptiles. With my huge snake phobia, I wisely decided not to go greet the last group. 

We saw animals we'd never -or maybe vaguely- heard of before, such as the wombat (the one that looks like a little brown bear), the tasmanian devil (I'm sure you'll know which one it is when you see his picture) and the platypus. The latter is some sort of tiny beaver with a long beak, hard to describe it even after I've seen it. He was swimming super fast in a very dark fish tank, so impossible to take a decent picture but you have to google it, it's the most extraordinary little creature!

We probably had the most fun feeding the kangaroos at Lone Pine. They're domesticated and eat anything out your hand which gave us the opportunity to take some pretty cool pictures. Have a look!

Brisbane

Brisbane, our first serious city to visit in Australia! With almost two million inhabitants, it's the country's third largest city and it's very modern yet quite relaxed and green. When we went for a little boat ride on the Brisbane river, we were thinking of a miniature version of London. 

We stayed four days with Sarah and Clare, two lovely Australian sisters we had met in the south of Cambodia. They live in a beautiful house in a suburb not too far from the city center and staying in a real house, with a real bed and shower felt so great after living out a van for the last three weeks. We really had time to recharge our batteries during these days; we visited the city a little, went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary (next post on the blog!) and ate and slept a lot.

After the kangaroo meat, we had our second typical Australian dish. Sarah and Clare prepared us pavlova, a desert made of meringue, cream and fruits. First time they made it but it was a big hit, delicious!