EC-Rider Travels

I happened to mention last night, my love for animals and this morning dear Justin took me to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary where they rescue and care for injured animals and, where possible, release them into the wild. So at last I saw my first echidna, wombat and Tasmanian devil. We joined a guided tour and learnt such fascinating facts about these enchanting three locals.

The echidna had to be my favourite, surprisingly no relation of the hedgehog but related to a platypus and is the worlds only other egg-laying mammal. The female lays a single, soft-shelled egg which she carries around for about ten days in piece of loose skin on her tummy creating a sort of shallow pouch. A baby echidna is called a ‘puggle’! How sweet is that? Echidnas have no teats, so their baby just pushes on their mothers tummy and milk is released. Echidnas have no teeth but a very effective 15cm tongue which slurps up ants, worms and insect larvae. These are very digestible so they don’t have a stomach. The Tasmanian echidnas are smaller than the Aussie ones and have more fur between their spines to keep them warm. Not needed today!

The Tasmanian Devil are also very cute to look at but apparently have the bite of a hyena! They are carnivorous marsupials largely living off roadkill. (Tasmania is the roadkill capital of the world!). They have up to 50 joeys at a time, furless and about the size of a piece of rice, but with just four teats, only ever bring up four/five of them. They produce four different kinds of milk to support their young through their various stages of growth. They are sadly endangered due to a horrible, transmissible facial cancer they pass on to one another and cannot recover from. 😔

We were then told about the wombat – adorable. They have just one baby (joey) about the size of a jellybean which they carry around in their pouch for 6-7 months. Weirdly a wombats’ pouch is positioned backwards, opening toward the rear rather than head, allowing the mother to dig without getting dirt in her pouch. The joey stays with its mother for up to two years and when it becomes an awkward (aggressive) teenager it is kicked out. Not a bad idea! They build the most amazing burrows which can be 30m long and up to five metres deep with lots of different rooms – a kitchen for their food, a bathroom and various bedrooms at different levels which they vary according to the temperature. It takes a wombat up to 14 days to digest a meal and they have cube shaped poo!

The sanctuary also rescues many varieties of reptiles and gorgeous birds including a very noisy and opinionated cockatoo called Fred (aged 108), and of course many kangaroos and wallabies. The guide did not go into any detail about these but they were fun to see and the roos completely unfazed by us – you could walk right up and stroke them. Sweet!

In the evening we went to the Hobart International Tennis Tournament which is one of the ladies’ warm-ups for the Australian Open in Melbourne. It was not quite like getting tickets for Wimbledon…. you just walked in! We arrived at 6pm and saw some great tennis, both doubles and singles which went on until about 11pm. Amazing to be quite so close – my goodness they hit the ball hard. A very warm day turned into a very chilly evening, and I had to swallow my words about Justin bringing the blanket and his beanie – I was more than grateful.