Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

Kangaroos, Crocs, and Parrots, Oh My!

This past weekend, our school provided another free trip, this time to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. Currumbin is about an hour and half drive north of Lismore, in Queensland. The Sanctuary itself was sort of half zoo, half open range animal space, and it took most of the day to see it all. The main draw of the place seems to be the koalas, and the somewhat unique opportunity you can have to hold one, and get your picture taken. Elizabeth jumped on that chance, as did a large group of international student. I opted to hang back and take (free) photos of them (they all seemed sleepy anyways).

There were clusters of koala enclosures almost as frequent as Starbucks in large cities. I was honestly surprised they didn’t give everyone a free one on your way out the door. On a more serious note, most of the wildlife at Currumbin have been rescued, either from displacement or injury, and nursed back to health at the facility itself.

There was plenty of other things to see there too, though. We caught a free flight show for about a half an hour that included most of the birds that have become endangered due to habitat lose in Australia. The most of impressive of these being the wedge-tailed eagle, which is the largest bird of prey in the entire country. Its wing span, for those of you still interested, averages around 9 feet. Huge bird, which huge talons that came awfully close to some peoples heads.

_mg_3635 — Some sort of bird, I forgot to write down the name..

We were also fortunate enough to be around for Crocodile feeding time.”Boss Hog” at Currumbin is over 16 feet long, and one of the largest animals that I recall seeing.

Some other various wildlife..

These lizards were actually quite interesting. There were not an official part of the sanctuary, but there were everywhere. Most of them were about 1/2 to 1 1/2 feet long and were running around everywhere. The four of us from Arizona couldn’t get enough of them because our lizards are tiny in comparison, but nobody else seemed to notice. I guess they are a common thing here.