Brisbane Part 1

I headed to Brisbane for the first time to attend the CYA Conference for children's book writers and illustrators. I really wanted to go after I heard one of the presenters was Jackie French who wrote Diary of a Wombat (one of my favorite children's books). She was fantastic! The rest of the conference was educational but fell short of what I had dreamed up in my head. I can't quite shake the lingering twinge of disappointment. This is not disappointment in the conference but in myself and what I hoped to achieve.


I can tell you what wasn't disappointing was the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary!! Lone Pine has lots of koalas that are fostered through the Australia Koala Foundation including Barnacle who I was lucky enough to meet. I got a wonderful welcome as Barnacle decided it was time to go poo while I was holding him but I really didn't care. He was beautiful!!

All of the koalas were split up by gender and age. Most of the grown up male koalas were by themselves as they are very territorial. There was a retirement village for the senior koalas, a kindergarten for the 2 year olds and a cubby house for the 1 year olds who had just left their moms and were learning to be independent. I was trying to take a picture of one of the little guys when he decided to switch sides all the sudden. It's crazy how far they can jump....SUPER KOALA!!! I thought the Cubby House was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen. How can a bunch of little sleepy koalas not be the cutest thing in the world?

But then I went around the corner and saw this.

I don't think I have ever seen anything quite so beautiful as this little baby all hugged up to her mama. A keeper was raking around her tree and she got a fright squishing herself closer into her mom's belly. I could have watched them for hours but I think Mama Koala had enough of me and decided to move to the other side with her baby on her back.