March 7, 2026
At our stop at Brisbane, we took a bus tour of the city and visited the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.
First, a word about Brisbane. It appeared to be open and clean, with some attractive architecture and a fair number of parks and trees. In this way it seemed like Sydney. Both cities have their skyscrapers, whose architecture is interesting, and which are often far enough apart that you can appreciate it. A bit of graffiti, but not much in either city. Our guides in both cities did tell us that the average price for a home or condo was about $1,000,000.
We then rode about an hour to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. It’s a park-like place open space with trees and large opens, and has a multitude of koalas, kangaroos, Tasmanian Devils, wombats, and a platypus among many species of mammals, marsupials, birds and reptiles. We had a ball.
We understand that Australian law no longe allows you to hold koalas, but you can pet them and get a photo op. We had our picture taken with Fletcher, whose fur was very soft. Sadly, he was more interested in eucalyptus leaves than in us. On the other hand, he didn’t poop on us.
We then visited the kangaroos. There were lots of them in an enclosure of several acres that we were allowed to wander through. They were very used to visitors and tolerated our attention easily. We’d say they behaved a bit like sheep. They weren’t threatening or skittish. If anything, we bored them.
Our next stop was the platypus building. They’re nocturnal, so the interior was very dark, and they spend a lot of time in the water, so their habitats featured pools. This is one swimming.
Finally, we visited the Tasmania Devil. It was about the size of a small to medium dog, and didn’t seem particularly fierce. It did have the ugliest feet and ears we’ve ever seen, if you exclude politicians.
On to Yorky’s Knob and the Great Barrier Reef,
Dottie and Mal
