Koala Sanctuary

February 3th 2014:

To sum up a koala: the only fast movement they make is a yawn. The reason they sleep 20 hours a day is the food they eat, eucalyptus leaves, has such a small amount of sugar and other energy supplying fibers. I will add more details to this post about the other animals we saw.

The bus ride to the Sanctuary was a good 40 minutes. It gave me time to finally realize how the malls set up in Brisbane reminded me of somewhere else I had been. They looked a lot like Puerto Rico. The signs for the stores all sort of look like used car dealership, with bright, big, bold lettering that jutted out of the roof overhang. And everything was just row after row of shops all attached as if they were one store. The malls were nothing like home where you went inside and there were two stories of separate stores and glass doors. There were still glass doors for window shopping, but rarely were their two story malls. I like how some of the names are, too. They must originate from aboriginal names because many of the names had multiple double O's. For example Toowoomba, or Indooroopilly.

When we returned to the CBD by bus, we still hadn't had very much to eat. This had unintentionally been our to-do day. So when we got on the bus to go to West End, we were pretty hungry. The bus we had intended to get on never arrived, but we took an express bus, and I became the official navigator because my Dad's eye sight isn't what it used to be. We were flying a little blind, but one of the streets on the map, Vulture St. was a shoe-win to get us to the man street. Before we got of the bus we hadn't intended on riding, I was smiling and nodding (I am glad this is the bus we took in the end) because the bus driver was singing to songs like "California Dream." I have never seen some many bus drivers who enjoy their job in my life. I took the front door entrance of the bus out just so I could express my gratitude to the drivers good singing! He was a very amicable and helpful to a disabled man who got on with his daughter, too. The was the first and probably last time I have ever heard a bus driver sing.

When we finally reached the main boulevard for West End, the first comment I made was that it was the Australian version of Boone. There were very many odds and ends shops, book stores, record stores, etc. And our lunch became a loaf of bread from the "Organic Sourdough Bread Shop" with a support local shops sign hanging in the window, and apples from the a mini farmer's market. My sister would have loved it there. It was just her style.

On the walk back from West End, I convinced my dad to take a step in the Science Museum. It was a nice break from all the outdoor sight seeing. It had an eclectic display that included a section on the animals and plants (geography) of Australia, dinosaur bones dug up in the deserts of Australia, Aboriginal history, WWII, and an odd section that was just on collections of locals who donated it for people's viewing pleasure. Some people have very odd collections. I will leave it at that.