Day 22: Kangaroos, Emu's and a Koala!

I should have known how the day was going to go when I very carefully pulled out of my parking space and heard a scrape.  There was a 2 foot pole thing—completely invisible to the driver—on the passenger side of the car.  I have scraped Cathy’s baby.  Kill me now.  Of course we’ll have it fixed, but I don’t want to tell her I’ve injured her super nice car.  Ugh. 

In my horror as I got back in the car after assessing the damage, I pulled my phone out to text her.  I was trying to think of what to say as I went to pull the car door shut and my phone literally just flew out of my hand.  When I picked it up off the pavement, the top of the screen was cracked.  Seriously!  In less than 5 minutes I’d screwed everything up.  In spite of everything else that’s happened today, I’ve had a knot in my stomach ever since.  I decided to tell Cath when we’re face to face—easier to kill me when I’m there in person, less time to worry about how bad the damage is when you can see it first hand.  Ugh twice.

We decided to breakfast at the Umpherson sink hole. We’d been told to go at dusk to feed the Opossums French fries but that just hasn’t ever worked out.  We pulled in around 7:30 this morning and walked down into the sink hole to make some breakfast. 

We found we really don’t like their fruit loops nor their coco pebbles—actually most of their cereals are made with ‘real’ sugar and they just taste weird.  That’s what I’m told at least, I’m not a fan of sugar cereals normally so I certainly wasn’t going to try ones that everyone else was saying were nasty.  π² thinks it's because everything here is made with wheat instead of corn, é thinks it's because everything has raw sugar and not refined.  Who knows?

The kids all went exploring while we heated up some cheese pizzas (that can be breakfast, right?) and some canned soups that we hadn’t eaten the night before.  When the kids could smell the food, they came running.  π walked over to where I was and whispered, “Um, Doll…look up!”  I looked and swallowed a scream as four little eyes were not only staring at me but were calculating the wisdom of jumping onto my head!  A Mama possum and her baby smelled breakfast too! 

We spent the next hour petting and feeding the possum, thoroughly enraptured by her tameness.  The kids explored the sink hole and it’s gardens, we read every plaque surrounding the grounds and learned that once upon a time a third of it was filled with water still and the man who owned the land put a little row boat on the ‘lake’ and would row around the perimeter.  Too fun! 

We’ve started to realize why we’re moving so slowly.  Where breakfast maybe takes half an hour to forty five minutes at home, here we’re looking at a two hour minimum! At ten we packed everything up and headed back to the cars…only to find that π had forgotten to unplug everything that he’d had charging and the battery was dead, again—thus the car wouldn’t even open.  The key doesn’t unlock the door anymore after the car was broken into awhile back so we were really stuck.  AAA to the rescue again—only each state here has their own version of AAA so it was a different company than before since we were in South Australia and not Victoria.  (And how cool is that? We now know the different states in Oz as well as various cities in each state—the kids are quite proud of themselves for that one!)  Luckily for us they were just as speedy as the Victoria AAA and it was only half past 11 when we finally got out of Mt. Gambier.

We made pretty good time, only stopping once or twice along the way and we pulled in for ‘lunch’ at 3:30.  (This really means that we got out of the car at 3:30 and the kids all went to play on the zip line and we started cooking meat pies on the grills.)  We were quick though and we were back on the road by 5:30.

Since it’s winter here, 5:30 is pretty close to dusk so how π ever saw the Tower Hill Wild Life Reserve, I’ll never know.  But he pulled in and I followed him.  Within the first 100 meters, we saw a herd of Kangaroos.  We drove really slowly after that, seeing Emu, rabbits, Roos (Mama’s with their babies are amazingly cute!) and tons and tons of birds.

 

We pulled in at one point when there were a bunch of Roo’s on the road.  We stood for probably 15 minutes just staring at one another.  We saw a little walk that led to a lake so decided to watch the sunset.

The view was incredible!  There were probably 50 black swans on the lake dancing  and swirling around in the fading light.  There were kookaburra—we’d just looked up their picture on google at lunch to see what they looked like!—singing in the trees.  Once the sun sunk all the way into the lake, the frogs started singing.  It was a cacophony of sound, and the neatest thing I’ve ever heard!  The frogs, the birds, the hopping of the roos!  AMAZING!!!!

We got back to the cars in pitch black—thank heavens for torches on our phones! And headed slowly out of the park.  Naturally we needed a bathroom break again.  Unfortunately, ∞ slammed K’s finger in the door.  It’s not broken but it’s nasty looking and so painful!  It’s amazing how a quick potty stop can turn into a marathon in a moment! 

Seemingly hours later we were again trying to drive out of the reserve when a woman with a young girl flagged us down.  π, in the lead, didn’t stop—unsure of what she needed or wanted.  I did and she asked, “Would you like to see a Koala?”

Quickly flashing headlights to get π to come back, we got out of the car. 

The koala was just sitting on the ground (highly unusual we’re told) eating the leaves of a eucalyptus tree.  It was phenomenal.  (I’m running out of synonyms for FREAKING AWESOME!!)  He was so tame and calm—Tammy (the woman who had flagged us down) volunteers in the reserve and told us that many of the animals on the reserve are hand raised so they’re used to humans handling them.  

She asked the kids, “What would you like to name him?”

“MARVIN!” they shouted!  We all laughed and L said, “Hi Marvin!”

 In his enthusiasm about going to Oz, L asked one day at home, when we would get to meet Marvin.  When I asked him who Marvin was he looked at me like I was insane and said, exasperatedly, “Marvin?  From Australia?  You know Marvin!”   Looks like we finally met him!

Everyone took their turns petting, feeding and posing with Marvin.  It was life changing.  He was so soft!  We visited with Tammy and got to know her a little bit, then she took a picture of us and for real this time, we headed out. 

Naturally, all the kids were hungry again, and they all needed to toilet after that and here it is 9:30 and we are just going to get on the road as soon as π’s order of fish and chips are ready.  We’ll be pulling into Cathy’s house super late, but I’m so excited to be back there and at the thought of spending the whole week with them that I just can’t wait!

What a monumental day!