Day 14 Lone Pine Koala Santuary

This morning was intended to be a work morning for everyone.  So, after a brief group meeting with the group at 9:15 I got a long black espresso and headed back to my room to continue doing some preliminary research.  My meeting with Anoop was set for 11:30, and I still had plenty of work to do.  When the time came for us to meet I felt confident about all of the material and information that I had gathered.  This was a very constructive meeting where we were able to come up with my aim and objectives for my research.  As of right now I am doing a comparative analysis of flood preparedness in the United States and Australia.  My objectives for my research are to:

1.     Conduct a critical analysis of literature to understand the development of disaster preparedness practices for floods in the U.S. and Australia.

2.     Obtain a historical perspective on flood disasters in the U.S. and Australia.

3.     Create a framework for and compare flood preparedness in the U.S. and Australia.

4.     Write an analysis of the findings and recommendations based on the results of the study.

This is a rough idea of where I am going with my thesis and it is subject to change at any time.

Next we went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.  I think I liked this place more than the Toranga Zoo because here we were able to hold koalas and feed kangaroos out of our hands.  This was so awesome.  Check out this picture of me holding a koala. 

I do have to say though that it was kind of strange holding it because it is almost like it is half asleep and kind of drunk too.  In fact the eucalypts leaves that the koala eats have a very low nutritional value.  It is very low in protein and contains a lot of indeigestable substances that are toxic to most species.  This causes the koala to have a very low metabolic rate, meaning it sleeps a lot and moves slow.   The average koala sleeps about 16 hours per day and eats during the remaining hours.  This explains their sluggish behavior.  Aside from the koala being very lazy, it had very thick soft fur.  It was so amazing to get to hold one these amazing creatures.

After holding a koala I ventured over to the kangaroos.  These extremely tame kangaroos were unbelievable.  We were able to walk up to them and literally feed them out of our hands with the food that we purchased from the general store on the property.  Check out Reel feeding these things.    

 Having the priveledge to be so close to all of these amazing animals really is such a blessing.  I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be here in Australia and I look forward to telling many more stories about my adventures when I get back to the states in Febuary.

Until next time,

Cheers