Salient

Big City Life

By Miyuki Mcguffie | 24 Mar, 2008

I was saving the following realisation for the punchline but I might as well put it out there now: Koala Park Sanctuary wasted a lot of my limited time in Sydney and all because their brochure said “sustainable”. I am a sucker.

The journey out got questionable when I had been on the train for 40 minutes with five more stops and a bus ride to go. After about an hour and a half of travel, a little regret and much wonderment as to why I didn’t decide to visit Wildlife World, a fraction of the travel time away, I stepped off the bus to the most underwhelming sight possible. A dingy, decrepit, sullen looking building; weeds growing out of the wooden facade and the entire frontage caged off except for the two metre wide entranceway.

$19 later I was in. And it smelt like poo. I don’t know why this caught me by surprise though. I made a beeline for the koalas, where the only one docile enough to be touched or photographed had to be the most downtrodden and resigned looking koala of the bunch. Poor guy.

Now, the redeeming factor of the park could have been the presence of penguins, something I would not have got closer to town. But they were bloody boring! All they did was stand there, shuffling about every now and then and that was it! I had imagined more of a petting zoo environment where I would get to touch and cuddle, not gawk and geeze and take silly pictures. So I went to the bus stop and sat around for 20 minutes instead. I feel bad for being unappreciative of the captive animal, considering its apparent plight, but I am ‘man’ and I can say what I want.

Hey, I haven’t written about being the crazy dancing girl at all! There’s not much to it actually. Refer to the final line in last week’s column and you have the story. Next week I might actually write about Wellington. Wow!