04.10.2018

04.10.2018 - 2 days at Billabong Sanctuary

Working

Waking up I felt a lot better, however, my throat was still hurting. Ranger Kim picked me up again this morning, and we drove to the sanctuary. The morning started like last time with some raking and cleaning. Then I got into food preparation where I had to cut a lot of things in the right size.

Will took me with him to feed one of the koala mothers and her joey. So he could take care of the mother, he just grabbed the joey and gave him to me with the simple sentence: 'hold this'. I knew how to hold a koala from Lone Pine, but this one was a joey and I didn't even have my hands in the right positions. Will just told me to 'softly push his head down if he tries to climb you.'

I held him for a while before he started getting so nervous and 'unhappy' with the situation, so I let him back to his mommy.

Later I shortly helped cleaning the bird enclosures. There was one rainbow lorikeet who started attacking the Billabong hat that I was wearing. I was really confused and thought that the food they give him is probably orange like the hat. But Ranger Jess told me that he is a big fan of the fabric that it's made of. So while I was cleaning, I gave him my hat to play with. When I was done, I wanted to grab my hat but then waited a second and held my hand out to him. And he actually jumped on it and started crawling his way to my shoulder. Jess said I was really fortunate since he does that very rarely😊.

I ate my free lunch sandwich and continued helping here and there. Towards the end, I had to bring a red-tailed black cockatoo back into his enclosure. He spent the day outside, his wings were trimmed so he wouldn't fly away. For that, I had to raise my hand again and wait until he climbed on. Then I walked through the sanctuary holding this rather big bird on my arm until we were back in his night enclosure.

Billabong Sanctuary has a lot of work, today I worked about an hour longer than I should have, and tomorrow is not looking any different. There is no dishwasher so all the dishes have to be done by hand, and there are a lot of dishes, it's surrounded by trees so every morning, every path has to be raked. I am tired and spent.

However, everyone does the same, there are no Rangers having an easy day while you're working, like I sometimes got the feeling at Lone Pine. They are happy with every helping hand and are also a lot less 'strict' than at Lone Pine. You can directly interact with most of the animals that at Lone Pine were classified as 'dangerous' and 'not handleable by volunteers'.

So it's exhausting but rewarding so to say. The Rangers are friendly and open, and you can ask anyone anything.

And I think I'll be fine with some extra work...