There are several outings that would be common to many children who grew up in Brisbane or South East Queensland: these are trips to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, the Dolphin pool at Coolangatta and Currumbin Sanctuary. Today I’d like to share with you some of the snaps from our family outings to these places.
This was always one of my favourite places as a child, especially when we would holiday near the beachfront in Currumbin. Despite its name, it also had kangaroos, wallabies and other critters as well as the rainbow lorikeets which gave the sanctuary its theme. Twice a day huge flocks of these colourful and gorgeous birds would arrive to be fed. People would hold up their tin plates filled with bread crumbs softened with honey and water. In mere moments there would be birds on the plate, on your arms, on your hair, and man their claws would scratch! I guess not good for anyone who had a Hitchcock like fear of birds. I also can’t believe the entry prices now, because I’m quite sure my parents would not have been able to afford comparative prices when I was a child yet we visited regularly.
As a child a trip to Lone Pine was almost de rigeur, and yet (hang my head in shame) I’m sure we never took our own children there. I wonder why not? My parents, or perhaps just my mother, would take me up to the Sanctuary on one of the ferry/cruise boats that travelled from North Quay out to the sanctuary. At least one time we took other children with us…I wonder if it was a birthday celebration, if so I no longer recall. Unfortunately I can’t include that photo here without the permission of the people in it.
I had often enough seen koalas on Magnetic Island when we holidayed there, as it is still a koala preservation zone. However the difference at Lone Pine was that you could cuddle them, and have your photo taken. Cuddly as they look they’ve been known to make their presence felt with VIPs by peeing on them!
Porpoise Pool Snapper Rocks, Coolangatta
This venue was built by Jack Evans in 1955 apparently and was Australia’s first trained dolphin show, a role now overtaken by Seaworld which has become an even more popular forum for school excursions and holiday visits.
I remember visiting the Porpoise pools at Point Danger a couple of times over the years and always enjoyed seeing the dolphins/porpoises as they are such exuberant creatures. You can see a YouTube video of the show here.
It was undoubtedly my exposure to these creatures that created some of my lust for a Readers Digest book on Wildlife which featured dolphins as the cover image.
Did you have favourite family outings when you were a child?
This post is part of the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge.
Family history across the seas 
That is amazing that you could get that close to the animals. I don’t remember any outtings where we got to hold… what would be comparable to koalas and kangaroos? Little goats? Baby possums =:O
We went to belle isle and rode the ponys. We went to the zoo once a year with my maternal grandfather and cousins. We went to the annual church picnic which was at a beach in Canada across the border that we used to drive across without a big deal. Now you need a passport. We went to the museums a lot and they were free then.
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I guess you could compare both places to petting zoos in a way Kristin. Some of our smaller animals are deadly but at that size they’re not too threatening and these were probably reared from infancy and so quite tame. How interesting that you could pop across into Canada for a picnic but no longer. Museums, like all these things, seem to come with price tags these days, sadly but I guess if it keeps them going it’s worth it.
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Great photos Pauleen. I’ll have to add these to my ‘places to visit’ when I get to Queensland someday. This has reminded me that my Mum and Dad have slides from Currumbin Sanctuary from the 1960s 🙂
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