I woke up at a reasonable 9am, and made myself some toast and jam for breakfast, and of course the ubiquitous cup of tea! The plan for today was for Jessica to take me to the Trowunna Wildlife Park. Having previously checked the time table, we worked out that if we left at 11am, we could make it to the park in time for the 1pm feeding times.
We headed off on time, and went to the Honey Farm in Chudleigh. Here there was more honey than you could shake a honey-stick at, and all manner of different things honey and bee related. One item that stuck out was a bee jumpsuit for a 4 year old or so, and it looked like a convict suit but in black and yellow - I pity the poor child that gets made to wear it!
We continued on to the wildlife park, and got there just a bit too late to see the start of the tour. We were able to re-join it though in time for the tour to be at the Eastern and Spotted-Tailed Quolls, the former can only be found in Tasmania, and is now extinct everywhere else.
We then went on to the Tasmanian Devil enclosure where two young (younger than 12 months) devils were being looked after by the keepers. They were very playful, tugging on he guide's jeans. We were all given the opportunity to pet em, and I was surprised at how soft the fur was.
Next up was feeding time for the older group of Tasmanian devils, and so we went there, and got to see them fighting over the carcass of a road killed quoll.
Tasmanian Devils are agonistic, meaning they will fight over things, and bite each other on the face , almost as a way of communication - which is how the face tumour disease has been spreading through the population.
Fortunately there seems to be some progress in terms of them developping their own immunity to the disease now, as the average life expectancy is only 5 years, the generations move on quickly.
That marked the end of the feeding tour, and so we were left to have a look at the other creatures there. Some forester kangaroos were haning about in the shade of a large tree, and it was possible to give them food and pet them (though not on the head).
There was also an echidna, which seemed to be content running around the pen doing all it could to evade photographic capture!
I caught back up with Jessica, who had sat down to watch some of the birds, and we went around the bird sanctuary area - some owls and other birds were being nursed back to health, and then we made it to the enclosure housing 4 Wedge Tailed Eagles. These birds of prey normally do not live well together, but were rescued by the wildlife center and are taken care of there - they are too injured to be released back to the wild, and are living together quite happily.
We then went on to the large devil enclosure o watch the devils there call to each other and chase each other around. While we were doing this, behind us, a parade of Cape Baron geese was going on, with the local ducks not very happy at the geese turning up to the feeding troughs, though being much smaller, didn't have a lot of choice in the matter!
We made it back to the entrance and were able to get on the start of the next tour, having spent 2 hours already there. This time we got to meet Willow the Wombat, who was brought out for feeding, as she was the one who woke up when the guiderrived with the food. We were able to pet Willow too - I would say that the wombat fur more closely resembles that of a deer, quite tough and prickly, and very definitely unidirectional.
We had now seen all of the park, so we went to the Elizabeth Town Bakery for some lunch, as none of us had eaten since breakfast!
After Lunch, we made a quick visit to Ashgrove Tasmanian Farm, which is a dairy farm that has a cheese shop. There was a large selection of different cheeses and a tasting area to try some of them.
There was also a lot of model cows, which the farm gets local school children to paint as an annual project, and this gave quite a colourful appearence to the whole place.
The next stop was back at Jessica's, as the plan for dinner was mexican beef tortillas, wich we took round to essica's friend as she had just moved in. We enjoyed that and gt shown a tour of the new property, which I have to say looked pretty nice, just the right size for the family that had just moved in.
We headed back to Jessica's again, and rlaxed on the couch, myself typing up more of this travelogue, before heading to sleep.