Hangin’ With the Aussie Locals
I went to the Billabong Koala and Wildlife Park in Port Macquarie today. The woman at the reception of my hostel told me to catch the bus at 9:05. I got to the bus station at 9:00 (it was 8:50 when I asked about the bus) and got down to the stop and waited and waited…and waited. I saw a number for the bus information line and I called and asked when the bus leaves for the Billabong Park and the operator said “8:55”. Great. When did the next one come? “10:55”. Awesome. So I kicked around the mall which was small and quite boring. I went into Big W, the Australian answer to Wal-Mart and as I was leaving one of the cashiers said, “Excuse me, sir. Can I have a look through your bag?”. It was my shoulder bag that had my sunscreen, camera, etc. in it. She looked through it and simply said, “thanks”. I was not really in the mood to deal with that but I didn’t want to make a scene and I definitely didn’t want to look suspicious.
Finally my bus came and I bought a round-trip ticket. We rode along and the bus driver yelled “Billabong.” I looked out the window and only saw a road leading to the right, hardly the park entrance gate I was expecting. I asked the driver when he would be back to pick me up (I was the only one getting off at the stop) and he gave me a slip of paper that had “150 350 505” scrawled on it. He said, “Just wait over there,” pointing in the most general direction; somewhere near the edge of the woods. I got off and walked up the road (which ended up being about the length of our dead-end road at home) and reached the park. I paid the entrance fee along with the 50 cents of kangaroo feed. I walked around the park and saw the most poisonous snake in the world, which can kill over 50,000 mice with a single bite. I saw strange marsupials and colorful exotic birds. Then I wandered over to the kangaroo, wallaroo, and wallaby feeding area. I was quite impressed and it was definitely the highlight. I got to lay down next to a little wallaby and feed it and pet it. The best part was that I felt like I had the whole park to myself. There were no rangers supervising me or any crowds of kids. I moved on the the baby kangaroos and they were the most adorable little creatures. They had those big, dark eyes and long eyelashes that baby deer have. They were a little bit more shy though and it was hard to get them to stay around for long before they hopped away. I got lots of great pictures, although I think that somehow my camera lost all of them (we’ll talk about that in the next post).
I left the park, after buying a traditional Australian leather hat. The particular hat that I wanted had no price on it so I was prepared to pay about $55 for it judging by the rest of the hats. I got up to the counter and the girl said that she would have to check on the price. She went away and came back and said “25 dollars”. I was sure there was some mistake but I wasn’t going to complain!
I wandered back down to the “bus stop” early to be sure not to miss the 3:50 bus because I definitely had seen enough of the park and had accumulated quite a nasty headache by then. I waited and then saw the bus coming. I assumed he was going to stop so I just stood there, watching him come towards me…and then fly past me. I was furious. A bunch of things started running through my head from “now I have to walk all the way back to town and I don’t even know how to get back and it might get dark…” to “now I have to wait around for over an hour”. I opted for the latter because I had already paid the fare and I knew that it was quite a long walk back. I had to sit at the end of the road, having that uncomfortable feeling as drivers drove past and stared at me as if I were a destitute hitchhiker. At 5:10 I saw the bus come around the curve a ways down and this time I walked right up to the edge of the road and waved my hand to be sure he knew to pick me up. I got back to town and walked to Baskin Robbins for a pick-me-up. It was a rough day from the bus to the Wal-Mart hassle to the bus, but I did have some great things to counter the bad, like the fact that I got to pet and hug and feed joeys and koalas. By the way, the koala was the softest, fuzziest animal I’ve ever pet.
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