Papua New Guinea – Day Two (Aug 10)

Seriously though, tomorrow’s post WILL be about Papua New Guinea. Yesterday, though, was another day spent in Brisbane.

The last time I was in Brisbane was back in 2019 for work, and we had an evening event that included a cruise on the Brisbane River. This trip I decided I wanted to take a cruise during the day, with the added benefit of cruising to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, just south of the city.

The Sanctuary, opened in 1927, is the oldest and largest koala sanctuary in the world, and it houses about 100 koalas, as well as dingoes, Tasmanian devils, saltwater crocodiles, a variety of birds, reptiles, kangaroos, sheep – all told, about 80 different Australian species.

Some fun facts I learned today – koalas aren’t bears (so it’s a mistake to call them “koala bears“), but are marsupials and have pockets like kangaroos. They eat eucalyptus almost entirely, and their digestive systems are specially adapted to allow them to do so. The word “koala” derives from an old indigenous language (Dharug) and essentially means “no drink” – they get so much water from eucalyptus leaves, that they don’t have to separately drink water. But – eucalyptus doesn’t provide much else and, as such, koalas pretty much spend 3-4 hours per day eating and sleeping the rest of the time. Kinda the good life.

Anyway – it was another gorgeous day here in Brisbane with only partly cloudy skies and temps in the high-60-‘s and low-70’s again, so it was a glorious day for a river cruise. Twisting and turning, we edged out of central business district into the western and southern suburbs, past beautiful homes that lined the river, as well as The University of Queensland, some apartment buildings nearby, and parkland. Brisbane has suffered its share of devastating floods from the river, the most recent of which was in 2022, resulting in more than 23,000 homes being inundated and with power outages impacting over 51,000 homes. There’s still some evidence of that flood along the path we took.

The cruise back-and-forth to the Sanctuary was about 70-75 minutes; the dock in Brisbane is a 10-minute walk from my hotel, while the dock at the Sanctuary is at a the bottom of a set of steps that leads directly to the entrance; in fact, when first opened the only way to get there was by boat.

It was a great three hours at the Sanctuary – a chance to learn about the species being cared for there while walking around in fresh air and sun and continuing to get over my jet-lag.

After the cruise back to the city, it was a lazy afternoon and dinner where I met the tour director and my travel companions for the next eleven days.

(Clicking on an image below will enlarge it in a new window).