Adventures of the Loik ~ Holl Family: Melbourne and Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary

Dear Family and Friends,

This week we are in Melbourne. On Sunday (your Saturday, remember to add 7 hours then minus a day) we went to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne. They had a lot of plants such as a fern 25 feet tall! They also had a bottle tree which is very thick and round at the base and gets narrower as it gets higher. After the Royal Botanical Gardens we went to the famous MCG (Melbourne Cricket Grounds). We went on a tour and learned that the stadium can hold 100,000 people. That’s more than any pro football stadium. They have a club for cricket and there are 100,000 members in the club. There are 200,000 waiting to get into the club and it takes 18 years to get into the club. Then after the tour we went to the National Sports Museum of Australia where we learned about Australian sports. They had an interactive area where you could do archery; you could take shots on a goalie (in soccer); you could field a ball in cricket (don’t ask me how to play); you could bike (extremely hard); and you could try to kick a goal in footy (or as you Americans call it Australian Rules football). All of it is done by computers.

Monday, we went to the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary with my grandfather’s friend from Manchester College, Reis Flora, and his wife Nima. At the sanctuary we went to a platypus show where we learned that some turtles can breathe through their bum. We also learned that male platypus have spurs on their back hind feet that have poison. Then we went to the birds of prey show where we learned that Australia has 700 types of birds, and they have 56 parrot species. We learned that the Black-Breasted Buzzard uses a rock to crack open emu eggs which they eat. The biggest Australian raptor, the Wedge-tailed Eagle) can see a rabbit move up to a kilometer away. Another interesting fact is that emu’s eyelids cover their eyes but the covering is white which makes it seem like its blind and it scared me (hahahahaha I know, you would have been scared too. It was right next to me).

My dad and I got to pet a dingo which is a wild dog. Its fur was very soft and fluffy and it kept getting stuck to my fingers because it was raining. At lunch we got to see a tree kangaroo climbing in a tree to get to its food and then eat some cantaloupe, corn, and potatoes, which was really cool because it ate the corn off the cob like a human (video coming soon once we have a better internet connection). We went through a wallaby section and some of the wallabies were hiding from the rain and others didn’t care and were eating. We got to pet them on the back. It felt like velvet (the material, not my cat) and they were very cute. We also saw Tasmanian devils, which are kind of like a little black cat/dog even though they are marsupials. When we showed up there were two Tasmanian devils feeding on the meat that the keeper was throwing to them. If one got to close to the other they started snarling at each other. That was pretty cool!