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Because our living situation was quite rustic, we decided to class it up a bit the next day and have a champagne brekkie in the Bungalow Bay animal sanctuary. This was our first true Australian breakfast and it was awesome…not to mention an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord buffet. One thing we noticed is that Australians loved breakfast. Every town that we've gone through, we've found many restaurants that serve brekkie all day long. Some of the items that are different than American breakfast were: lamb chops, toad in the hole (egg cooked in the middle of toast), Aussie-style chutney, vegemite (a yeast spread for toast), and honeycomb. After our meal, we had a lovely meet-n-greet with several of the local animals within the sanctuary. Here is our cast of characters with a little bio of each:
Shadow the black cockatoo - He doesn't know how to fly, he likes flirting with boys, and he ate seeds from between our lips.
Charlie the white cockatoo - She loves a good scratch under her wings and has the temperament and intelligence of a 3-year-old child.
Bobby the salt-water croc - She is expected to live up to 150 years old and would kill surprisingly fewer humans than most people think (cause only about 1 death every 2 years). My dad will be relieved to hear this since he was afraid I'd get eaten by a crocodile while in AU.
Harry the wombat - He actually might be dead. Carrie the ranger/tour guide tried several times to wake him up with no success. We peeked in his house and he just layed there on his back with legs up in the air. But when he is awake, he can run up to 40km/hour, which is very surprising considering his body type was more representative of a fat pig.
Annie, Pebbles, and Noah the koalas - They have an average lifespan of 10 years, at which point they will starve to death after gnawing down their teeth. They have no natural predators since no animals really crave a furry ball of intestines. They eat eucalyptus, which is poisonous to all other animals, sleep 16-20 hours per day, and self-regulate their population with a Chlamydia.
Pythons - Have 10,000 muscles in their body which they use to strangle their prey before swallowing them whole. There have been a few instances when pythons have even swallowed whole children.
We also got to hold some skinks, lizards, turtles.
After our tour with the animals, we met up with the guys to check out the beach at Horseshoe Bay - only a 5-minute stroll down the road. Horseshoe Bay is picturesque with its sandy beaches, teal-blue water, and mountainous backdrop. Tom played frisbee with us until Anne's wardrobe malfunction. As she jumped up to catch the frisbee, her swimsuit top came off. I was looking the other way, but all I heard was a scream and turned to find Anne clambering to retrieve her top on the beach. We decided to take 'er easy with some sunbathing and conversation on the beautiful beach. As you guys might know, Anne and I can't sit still for long, so we left the beach and went on an incredible 12km hiking tour of a few Magnetic Island bays (Balding, Radical, Florence, and Arthur Bays) which took about 3 hours. One of the beaches was designated as a Nudist Beach, but to our disappointment, no naked people could be found. We climbed up to a lookout and took some amazing photos of the bays as well as our view of Townsville. We finally discovered first-hand what those "Don't Spread Electic Ants" road signs were warning us of as I walked right into a nest of them (aka red ants). It took a while to brush them all off of me and my pack, but I felt lucky having only been bitten once. We ended the evening with a BBQ and a few drinks before heading to bed.
- comments
Bernice Applebee OMG did I laugh out loud when I read about the frisbee event! Great visual Steve!
Jasmine Pilacinski I love the descriptions of the animals! Sorry Annie that your malfunction happened...lol!