Healsville Animal Sanctuary

The road over the mountain to Healsville.

Lucy joined me on this road trip.

A purebreed dingo in the Animal Sanctuary.

A wedge tailed eagle.

An emu.

A lyrebird.

A collared lizard.

A numbat.

A bilby.

Sunday, May 1^st.

This morning was much cooler and it had rained most of the night. I went out and did my grocery shopping and then decided to drive to the Healsville Animal Sanctuary. I invited Lucy, who I had met the other night to join me. This is a place where the International Teachers Association had taken some of the Canadian teachers about a month ago when they went on a trip to the Yarra Valley. I had not attended that because Carol, Bev and I had gone to the Yarra Valley wineries with the two principals back in February. However, I had heard that they had platypus at the sanctuary and I know that that is one animal I am very unlikely to see in the wild and I would like a chance to see.

So we drove back to the Yarra National Park and over the mountain and into Healsville. The drive over the mountain was beautiful, as again I drove through another rainforest and this time it was raining, hard at times. As we drove over the mountain I scared a number of birds that had really long tails, like peacocks or pheasants, but I was unable to get a photograph.

The sanctuary was a cross between a zoo and a wildlife park like the one I went to in Ballarat. There were displays of various Australian animals, like dingos, emus, kangaroos, koalas, rock wallabys and echidnas. They also had a large number of birds and a bird show, where various birds were brought out to fly around the audience. This is where I saw Australia's largest raptor, the wedge eagle, as well as a few different species of parrots, like the galah and the sulphur-crested cockatoo. They also had a few aviaries that you could walk into and that's where I saw the bird that I had scared on the road. It was lyrebird, which has long tail features, that when displayed for the female, look like the medieval instrument the lyre. There was also a building of night creatures where there was bats, wombats, numbats and bilbys. A large number of Australian marsupials are nocturnal and I am not likely to see them in the wild. There was another building full of indigenous lizards and snakes. 

I did see platypus but was unable to get a good photo because of the lighting and how active they were. But I did take a video. They are really amazing animals, they lay eggs, feed their young with milk and they look like they are made from a number of different animals. Truly a missing link. They also have a poisonous nail on their back feet.

The sanctuary has a good sized animal hospital where they not only take care of their animals but any that are injured on the roads in the area. They let people in to have a look and I saw a couple of vets taping a parrot onto its back with a gas mask over its beak in preparation of some operation. I enjoyed the sanctuary and spent most of the afternoon there before driving back to Chelsea. It was nice to have Lucy's company and we had a great day.

When I got home, just after dark, I made my salad and relaxed for the evening. As we head further into autumn and towards the Victorian winter, the days are getting shorter and cooler. The sun sets about 5pm now, which makes for shorter days to explore.