Since the bus schedule was more convenient on Monday I attempted my trip to Healesville again. It was a 20 minute tram ride to the city center, then maybe an hour by train to Lilydale. The bus at Lilydale was waiting when I got there, so it was just another 40 minutes to Healesville and a final transfer for another 15 minute bus ride to Healesville Sanctuary. In simplest terms Healesville Sanctuary is a zoo - one of 3 in the Melbourne area. Unlike the other two, however, the one in Healesville only contains Australian animals. Since the animals are in their natural habitat it's pretty open. It also contains a large animal clinic that nurses and looks after both animals from inside the sanctuary and other wild animals that are brought in with injuries. Since I'm probably not going to get a chance to go deep into the outback to see all the animals in the true wild, I figured this would be something of a compromise.
I've always loved animals, and been fascinated by marsupials. I'm not going to go through animal by animal, but here's a mix of pictures from the sanctuary.
I had an seconardy reason for wanting to visit the place as well. I've mentioned Belgian street artist Roa a few times when I was travelling around Europe. One interview I had read with him explained how he always paints animals native to the country he's in, so he really looked forward to being able to travel to Australia or Africa or something to have new, interesting animals to paint. Well, in November he came to Melbourne to do a show and while he was there he visited the Healesville Sanctuary and did some paintings!
The first three are from buildings at the sanctuary, and the last one is from the cafe at the National Victoary Gallery in Melbourne, which led to me finding out about all the Healesville stuff in the first place.
1 comment:
Richard + koala! Yay! Also, I love the clothes you've picked up along the way.
Post a Comment