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| Day 3 - Wednesday, October 3rd, 2001 Brisbane - Partly Cloudy 28°C | ||
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The cruise was steady and relaxing, with many interesting sights along the way. Large fruit bats hung in the trees along the shoreline, expensive homes with boat garages and manicured lawns lined the riverbank as we passed through suburbia, and Brisbane’s popular XXXX brewery (pronounced four X) loomed in the distance. Our boat docked at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, a special place to us since we have been fostering a koala named Maggie who has lived there since 1999, so we looked forward to visiting the sanctuary in the hopes of catching a glimpse of her. Stepping off the boat, Lyne became as giddy as a schoolchild as she skipped from pen to pen and photographed every koala in sight. Unfortunately, many of the enclosures did not have any posted names of the animals inside, so finding Maggie was virtually impossible without the help of park staff. Heading towards the visitors centre was when Lyne perked up even more as we came across the Cuddle a Koala area. The opportunity to hold one in her arms was too great to pass up, so we immediately stood in line and awaited our turn. Bracket was the name of the large male koala whose turn it was to entertain the guests. The staff instructed Lyne on how to hold him and then gently placed him in her arms. She had that "I could die now" look on her face for almost five minutes as the staff fiddled with the digital camera, which had just run out of battery power. When it was time to hand him over for the next person to take their turn (me actually), I half expected her to take the animal hostage. My turn came and went, and then we proceeded to tour the grounds for a few minutes until our photos were ready for pickup. To our initial disappointment, they did not print our photos on the standard 8x10 glossy stock with frame that we had originally requested, but instead on custom rolled up calendars. We politely indicated this to the staff and requested that they reprint them correctly, but they were unable to do so because they had already deleted the photos. We were quite surprised however when they instructed us to cut in front of the line and have another free picture taken with Bracket. The pictures were ready and turned out nicely just as it was time to head to the parking area where a bus was picking us up. We never received confirmation that we saw Maggie, but we are sure that she is on one of the many rolls of film taken that day. We asked the driver to drop us off a few blocks from our hotel so we could walk back and take in some sights. We came upon a monitor lizard sitting on the sidewalk that was not at all camera shy, and after stopping in at a local sandwich shop to pick up some portable supper, we returned to the botanical gardens to relax and eat. Finally, we returned to the hotel to pack up our things and get ready for our flight the next day. |
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o supplement our breakfast of fruit that we held over from day one, we quickly walked about town to pickup fresh muffins and orange juice. Not wanting to order coffee anywhere for fear of repeating the restaurant mistake, the kettle in our room became my fall back plan. The shuttle pickup for our next tour was on time, and again dropped us at the Transit Centre where we transferred to a coach bus. A quick trip to another marina and we boarded a small ferryboat, this time for a trip up river.
