Saturday I joined a group of Uni students going to Billabong Sanctuary, which is a sort-of zoo/ game park about a 1/2 hour out of town.
You could buy food and feed the kangaroos, birds, and other things wandering around, and then they had various Australian fauna in exhibits. I didn't buy any food, but I got to see some little kids feeding things.
Kangaroo family
There was a show where they brought out a koala, then a wombat, then a bunch of snakes, and then some lizards. You had to pay to hold the koala and the wombat, but you could touch them, and I figured that was close enough. Holding the snakes and lizards was free, though.
She works at a tourist attraction, she should expect to end up on the internet.
The lizard in my hands did NOT APPROVE of me.
Then there was a croc-feeding show, accompanied by a long list of all the things that are more dangerous than crocodiles. The crocs have kind of figured out that they'll only get the food if they don't jump and wait for the guy to hit them with it, then snap, though, so we mostly watched crocs avoid getting exercise.
So that was Billabong. Pretty cool, and it's mandatory to pet a koala before you leave Australia.
Here's the rest of my Billabong pictures.
Sunday I took a stroll down to Palmetium Botanical Garden, which is just down the bike path from my house. It's a really big, nice park, lots of cool things from all over the world... but only tropics, so nothing I recognized from home.
The rainforest section:
Monday I don't have class, so I took a bus into town in the morning and went to the Queen's Garden. It was a good day for it, cool and overcast and drizzling a bit, and Monday, so I pretty much had the whole place to myself.
The Queen's Garden isn't quite as nice as Palmetium, size and diversity-wise, but it's still a nice formal garden. They had a couple of hedge mazes and a rose garden, and some huge fig trees.
They also had an aviary with some exotic birds, like peacocks and... turkeys. OK.
After the garden, I walked along the Strand. Nobody much out there, but the water park was still running. Too cold to go swimming, but maybe before I leave. Also saw a couple of misc. Townsville things.
All the photos of Townsville are up in the General Australian Pics folder.
I stopped at the Aboriginal Culture Center, which is mostly a gallery of local Aboriginal artwork (so no photos allowed, you have to buy them... for way more money than I have).
Next to that is the North Queensland Science Museum (or something to that effect). They had a ship wreak exhibit and some things on coral, dinosaurs, deep sea creatures, and the rainforest. All that jazz. They also had a kids interactive zone with no kids in it because it was Monday afternoon, so I played around in there for longer than I should admit.
Two things from Invertebrate Zoology legend: A giant pyc (sea spider) and a deep-sea sea cucumber.
A magical leopleurodon! (or something in the same spirit.
Botanical Gardens and Museums has more pictures from both gardens and the science museum, including a picture of the butterflies of Queensland, which is a pretty impressive display.
After that I stopped at the local art museum, where the visiting exhibit was made up entirely things sculpted to look like food! I was so happy!
They had one that was "meals for the trades", so it was trade-related objects to look like meals. For example, the upholsterer had a slice of cake made out of upholstery layers.
There were also teacups made out of various things... like, a "frivolitea" made out of party favors.
No pictures. (Well, ok, there are pictures that I took before someone told me that I wasn't supposed to be taking them, but I don't want the museum to get in trouble, so I'm keeping them safely offline.)
And that was my weekend.
I have a lab practical test for Marine Algae on Friday, so my efforts are mostly going towards studying for that. After Friday I only have one more week of classes, and only one month left in AU!
It's getting chilly here. I might have to start wearing a jacket from time to time.
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