Noosa - On the Sun Coast of Queensland
Tuesday, March 13th
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The drive to Noosa was very interesting. I have never driven a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car! Of course they also drive on the left side of the road as compared to the right side that we drive on in the US. Everyone will be glad to know that I am getting very good at this. The hardest part of having all car traffic driving on the opposite side of the road is being a pedestrian. When I go to cross the street I instinctively look to the left for oncoming traffic. Then I step out. Well here you just got run over here cause the cars are coming from your right. It is very hard to get used to.
The beaches in Noosa are very beautiful as you will see below. I feel compeled to spend as much time there as possible, yes I know it's very hard work being on vactation.
I located an animal sanctuary about 50 KM from here. I drove there to get the pictures you will see below of various animals. They had a wonderful tour-guide telling all about the animals, especially the kolas. YES you did get to "cuddle a kola".
Noosa Beach
From the resort where I'm staying this is the beach that is mere steps away from the room. The beach was pretty crowded over the weekend but then on Monday the numbers really dropped off. You have to remember that this is the start of Fall for Australia so the tourist population is starting to drop off.The truck and flags you see on the beach are part of the "Surf Patrol". They are the life guards who save you from drowning, hopefully. They use the flags to mark places where they recommend that you swim. I swam way out yesterday so I could ride in on the really big waves.
I'll be staying at the Sheraton in Brisbane.
Sunshine Beach
Just to the South of Noosa as you go down the coast is a whole line of beach towns. This picture was taken at Sunshine Beach. The beach at Noosa is in a cove but this beach faces directly into the Pacific Ocean. That is why you see much bigger waves and lots more surfers
Noosa Heads
The town of Noosa Heads is right on the beach. At the top you can see the Noosa River as it spills into the Pacfic Ocean. This is the same beach you see in the first picture on this page.This picture is taken from the Noosa National Forest. It is a protected area right on the coast. It has very large hills that extend right up to the coast line. As you can see it is a very good vantage point for the town below. One of the buildings you see is the hotel that I am staying at.
Animals
I drove to a place called "Forest Glen Sanctuary". They provide a safe place for many different kinds of animals native to Australia to live. The instructor gave about a half-hour talk just on Kolas. Then you could drive through the sanctuary and all the other kinds of animals would come up to your car. They mainly wanted the food that everyone feeds them. I bought a bucket of feed so that made me very popular. I had deer, Kangaroo and emus sticking their heads in the window. It was very hard to get them to go far enough away to get a picture.Look for the picture of the kangaroo with the baby partially hanging out of her pouch!
I know you guys learned a lot about Australia from Miss Johnson and Mrs. Gephart, hopefully I picked even more facts. I will list some below.
Kolas don't drink water. The Eucalyptus leaves contain about 50% water, that's all they need.
There are about 40,000 Kolas in Australia, down from about 3 million.
There are 600 varieties of Eucalyptus trees. The kola will tolerate about 100 of these. They really like only about 6 in all.
Marsupials are defined mainly by the length or their gestation period. That is the time necessary to produce a baby. For Kolas it is about 35 days which is very short. After birth they climb into their mother's pouch to complete their growth.
The Kolas sleep about 20 hours a day, they spend the rest of the time eating and scratching. The ones I saw were mostly eating and scratching.
Kolas will live to be about 6 years old in the wild. The ones in captivity live about 15 years.
Kolas raised in captivity do not develop the ability to locate Eucalyptus trees that they like to eat. Therefore they can never be released into the wild. They had one escape from the sanctuary, they later found it up a palm tree looking for leaves to eat!
The Kolas further to the South are larger than the ones here. They are also more brown where these tend to be grey.
