The world’s oldest and largest koala sanctuary is the Lone Pine Sanctuary just outside of Brisbane. Bruce, Anita, Diane and I went there for the day. They advertise 100 koalas and 75 native Australian species. In many ways this makes it a zoo as much as a sanctuary. I find zoos tricky. There is a role in conservation and animal study. There is also the issue of caged wild animals and people paying money to see them. This is exactly what we did. I hoped our entry fee went more towards animal welfare rather than profits.
In the cages, near the entrance, were birds. This wasn’t overly exciting but not far from there was a Tasmanian Devil. A carnivorous marsupial that used to be all over Australia but is now confined to the island of Tasmania. The devil’s large head and neck give it one the strongest bites for a predatory land mammal. It hunts prey and scavenges on carrion. Devils are endangered. They have suffered from hunting, poisoning and habitat loss. They are particularly vulnerable to being killed on roads and, recently, have been ravaged by devil facial tumour disease – a type of infectious cancer. Since 2013, Tasmanian devils are being sent to zoos around the world as part of the Australian government’s Save the Tasmanian Devil Program. The devil is an iconic symbol of Tasmania and many organisations, groups and products associated with the state use the animal in their logos. It is seen as an important attractor of tourists to Tasmania.
One bird that did attract my interest was a large wedge tailed eagle. A rather magnificent bird that was a permanent resident. Apparently its wings were damaged when it was young and it has been here ever since.
There were a lot of koalas. Several enclosures dotted around the place each holding up to ten koalas. They were sleeping in trees. The “trees” are generally made of dead wood. Each tree has a container for fresh branches of eucalyptus. Koala food for the few hours they are awake.
Running around all over the place were water dragons. Semi-aquatic lizards native to eastern Australia and commonly found near water. They grow up to 60 cm and, in the wild, are very shy. However, the dragons running around the zoo had clearly become habituated to humans and seemed quite unconcerned. I quite liked that they were sitting beside the animal cages and occasionally on top of them. Like they owned the place.
We watched the turtles for a while. They floated in the water and pulled faces at us. Then we walked up to an open area on top of a hill where visitors were encouraged to feed kangaroos. For a fee, you could buy some food and then attempt to get an emu or kangaroo to eat it. There were so many people trying to do this that I think the poor animals had eaten more than enough. They showed little interest in being fed and seemed more inclined to sleep. In places, there was the slightly odd scene of kangaroos lying on the ground, trying to get some sleep and mostly ignoring the people trying to coerce them with food while taking selfies. The emu was wide awake, ogling the circling feeders with a manic intensity. There was just the one of these big birds. Second in size only to African ostriches. It moved around on powerful, three toed legs, keeping its distance from the outstretched arms.
Moving on, we found some freshwater crocodiles. These were even less active. In several minutes of watching, I never even saw an eyelid flicker. Fast asleep.
The dingoes were awake and being fussed by a small group with a guide. The dingo is a feral dog, meaning it descended from domesticated ancestors. However, it was never very welln domesticated. Dingoes and indigenous Australians lived beside each other in a mutually beneficial way but without any high degree of dependency. In this sense, the role of a dingo is somewhere between a wolf and a domestic dog. The particular dingoes that we were looking at seemed to behave just like domestic dogs complete with belly rubs. They are occasionally adopted but in general do not make good pets because they still have a lot of wild instincts.
Moving on to another section we spotted an echidnas. Vaguely reminiscent of a porcupine but smaller. They are monotremes, a unique group of mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. Young echidnas are called puggles and suckle in their mother’s pouch until they develop spines. This echidna was running up and down by the fence. Up and down rather manically, obsessively and without obvious purpose. We saw this sort of behaviour in several of the caged animals. The Tasmanian devil had been frantically chasing round a circuit jumping on and off a log. Later we saw a platypus swimming constantly in a small circle. Stereotypic behaviours are a key symptom of a psychological condition sometimes referred to as zoochosis. These are abnormal, repetitive, and functionless actions rarely, if ever, seen in wild animals. It is a form of psychosis that is a clear sign of a very unhappy animal.
A quenda is a subspecies of the southern brown bandicoot native to southwestern Australia. They look a like large rats and have been called pig-rats. In fact, they are marsupials. Male bandicoots have bifurcated penises and the females raise their young in pouches. They are mainly nocturnal and forage for underground fungi, insects, and roots by digging small holes.
Nearby was a pademelon. Another small marsupial belonging to the macropod family, which also includes kangaroos and wallabies. I thought it looked cuter than a wallaby and had lovely red fur.
The largest herbivorous burrowing mammal in the world, typically weighing around 32 kg and growing up to 1 metre in length, is the northern hairy-nosed wombat. It is also one of the rarest land mammals in the world. Critically endangered with a population of just a few hundred. Once considered extinct, a handful were discovered in the Epping Forest National Park in the 1930s.
Right next to this was another rare animal, the unlikely sounding tree-kangaroo. I have no idea whether they can actually hop along branches. More likely they climb in safe and considered fashion. Originating in the northern forests they are solitary animals. This one was thoroughly engrossed in eating leaves.
As we were heading back to the carpark, we came across the feeding of the rainbow lorikeets. A great flock of them was flying in circles focused on a group of tourists armed with bowls of lorikeet food on sticks. This was obviously a daily occurrence; the birds knew where and when to come. The very brightly coloured parrots made an impressive sight and a nice way to end our day at the Lone Pine Sanctuary.
As ever, the zoo left me with mixed feelings. It was great to see some rare animals that I almost certainly would not see otherwise. It was also nice to see animals being saved in various ways. Less nice were the animals that clearly do not like being caged. There is also the general issue of animals being commoditised, turned into objects that can be viewed and poked at for a price.
The following day we were saying goodbye to Bruce and Anita and flying to New Zealand.
