Pupletts in Sweden: Alana's Camp and Warrawong Sanctuary (November 21-25th)

This was a big week for us - Kristine had a couple of work seminars to attend, Alana had lots of practices for her dance and camp.

Her school home group headed down to Endeavor Conference Center Camp in Victor Harbour (about an hour south of our house and at the southern tip of the Fleurieu Peninsula).

Unfortunately the weather was pretty terrible, we had gale force winds and plenty of rain. Here's a couple of videos I took at the beach the night Alana went on camp:

They did a stack of team building exercises and visited Urimbirra Wildlife Park. Here's a few of Alana's pictures of the trip:

Monitor Lizard

Tawny Frogmouth Owl - looking really impressed

Tawny Frogmouth

Emu

Rainbow Lorikeet

Wallaby

Joey in the pouch

Koala

Dingos

Crocodile

Rainbow Lorikeets

A few stories from Alana:
For snack on the camp everyone had banana bread, but Alana is allergic to banana, so she was given banana-free banana bread... fortunately it wasn't just bread, but instead a fruity sponge cake.

They all went for a bike ride, but the weather was terrible and we had gale force winds. Alana was blown off her bike a few times (after being given a few different bikes where she couldn't reach the pedals). One of the girls was blown off the bike and then both she and the bike rolled down a hill onto the beach, and they all had to stop in the middle of the footpath to wait for her to get back up and see if she was alright.

They weren't allowed the take the mattresses outside - which was kind of a given, since it was windy and rainy all week.

They had a sandcastle competition on the last day and the team that stole Alana's team's idea ended up winning the competition.

There was a box of biscuits in the cafeteria, and her friends didnt want to get their own biscuits, so they asked Alana to get them some. So Alana took a handful of biscuits and worried the teachers because they thought she was going to eat them all herself.

Her friends were talking on the grass between the cabins and then it started pouring with rain. It was suggested that they move inside, but then it stopped raining a few seconds later.

When they went boogie-boarding, someone crashed into Alana, flipping her off her board and trapping her under their board as they rode in to shore.

Despite all of this, Alana survived the trip somehow - they weren't eaten by bears or murdered by crazy prison escapees (or the teachers) and she came home on Friday night with only a slight sunburn and ready to catch up on three nights of missed sleep.

On Sunday, we decided to head to continue Alana's theme for animals and head down to Warrawong Wildlife Sanctuary.

Warrawong was a parcel of land that was established by Dr John Wamsley in 1969 to protect native animals. Australia has a huge problem with introduced species, such as foxes and feral animals like cats and dogs, killing the native wildlife (and rabbits etc killing the flora). Dr Wamsley was famous for his feral cat skin hat and for hunting of feral and introduced species. He fenced the area off and then eradicated all of the feral and introduced animals and plants in the area. In 1988 the site was expanded to include a variety of Australian habitats It was closed in 2005 due to poor commercial performance. It passed through the hands of the owners of the Gumeracha Big Rocking Horse and then to Zoos South Australia, before being purchased in 2018 by a couple who ran Western Australia's Peel Zoo.

Kris had been watching the facebook feed for the park online when we were in Sweden, as the couple repaired the site and dealt with foxes, storms and neglect. They are still working on expanding the site, having just purchased another parcel of land containing the lake. We had been meaning to go visit for a while, but were stopped for a variety of reasons - Kris' back pain, super hot weather and rainy cold weather.

Eventually we had a perfect day and decided to head down for a visit. It was a little costly for us all to get in, and still in the process of growing. We saw the wild turtles and wallabies and a koala, but otherwise we didn't get to see many wild animals - although this was probably due to the three portable noisemakers (children) we took with us. However we got to watch the reptile and animal shows as well as seeing them training the baby emu chicks.

Overall it was a fun day and nice to get everyone out of the house for a few hours walking.

The drive

We arrived just in time to catch the reptile exhibition, starting the Nagini the Carpet Python (also known as a NW Carpet Python, Black Headed Python or Coastal Carpet Python):

Oliver the Olive Python

Tomas touching the snake

Alana and Tomas holding Oliver

Tom and Cam with Oliver

Keir, Cam, Tom and Alana with Oliver

Emu chicks

Blue-Tounge (Shingleback) Lizard

After the show, we headed out to walk around the park.

The five habitats represented - Grassland, Wetlands, Tall Trees, Rain-forest and Scrubland

Park map

Scrublands

The first animals we saw were a herd of three goats. Tomas had a serious chat with them - "Hi goat. I eat your cheese. It's nice, so can you please ask your friends to make more cheese for me."

Mobile cheese makers (goats)

We then headed further into the scrublands towards the tall trees section.

Our next animal was a little harder to see, a koala up pretty high in one of the trees:

Koala up in the tree

Zoomed

Due to the recent storms, Warrawong had a fair number of trees fall down. It was evident here and throughout the park:

Fallen Tree

Our next stop was the ruin - the remains of an 1800s brick cottage called "Stones Cottage". The ruins are now 40 years old and being reclaimed by the scrub:

The ruins

We then headed down to the lake. We hoped to see a platypus, but had no luck there, but there were LOTS of turtles of different sizes:

The lake

Turtles!

Boardwalk through the swamp

Black Swans

We arrived back at the main area just in time for the animal exhibition. Alana got to be an assistant and started by holding the shingleback. It soon got too wriggly and she ended up holding the bearded dragon. She and the presenter carried the lizards around for people to see and touch.

Alana with Elle the shingleback (the shingleback's tail looks like a head also, so the staff gave them palindrome names - elle and Bob)

Elle (shingleback) and Thorn (the bearded dragon)

Elle tries to escape (again)

So there was a lizard swap and Alana ended up with Thorn

Thorn

Once the lizards had been shown around, the snakes came back out, first Nagini and then Oliver:

Nagini

Oliver

Once the snakes were away, the next animal was Rufous betong, also known as the Rufous rat-kangaroo. It was originally found the whole way up the east coast of Australia but feral animals and habitat destruction has limited them to just a portion of Queensland. They are now no longer endangered, but have yet to spread back into NSW. It was found that the Rufous betong fed on a beneficial fungus that grew on old eucalyptus trees and was important in spreading the fungus between the trees. Without the betong, the beneficial fungus did not spread and the trees became unhealthy.

The betong that was displayed was a joey that was bred in the park as part of their breeding program. It was abandoned by its mother in the burrow and was raised by the park staff. Therefore it was used to humans and would be unable to be released into the wild.

Rufous betong

The final animal to come out was a barn owl, Penny. She was a newbie, only two months old and still in training. They had a more mature owl that did most of the shows, but he was a rescue owl and had some chest injuries that meant the needed lots of rest. Penny is still learning and hence was tethered with fishing line to leather ankle straps to make sure she didn't fly away.

Penny the barn owl

Flying

After the show was finished, we headed back into the park to see if we could find some kangaroos or wallabies. Eventually we found a couple of wallabies up near where we saw the goats.