Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, 30 minutes drive from Hobart CBD, operates with a focus on projects to conserve, rescue, rehabilitate and re-release injured wildlife. Their work include wildlife rescue program, education outreach, breeding programs, conservation projects and research which run solely on visitor admission fees and donations.
Entrance fee at A$26 comes with a complimentary bag of kangaroo food, yup… the roos roam freely within the Sanctuary, the guy at the ticket booth warned us “they know you have food :)”. Not really enjoying them licking and eating the food from my hand, it just got all wet and the food residues just got stuck to my hand. One even aggressively grab on to my hand and ate real greedily!
There’s daily guided tours for free where they will share the stories of survival of the animals in the sanctuary. We managed to join the full guided tour which started at 2 pm that day.
Tina the wombat
Meet Tina the 2 years old wombat which is such a darling. Her story however made me teared. Tina was rescued and brought to the sanctuary when her mother was hit by a car. Unfortunately, her mother was hit twice and the 2nd time hit little Tina who was then in her mother’s pouch. She was seriously injured and due to her head injury, Tina’s healing process has been slow, however the guide was confident she will progress and be released to wildlife soon! Gambatte Tina!
Interesting facts about wombats
Looks are so deceiving. They look cute, round with short legs but wombats are strong and fast! They have a very hard cartilage plate on their rump providing protection from predators and it can be used to crush attackers against the roof of the burrow!
Wombats have square poo! These cubes of poo are placed on elevated objects to mark territory, so that’s also why the shape is square, so that it will not roll away!
There’s no koala in Tasmania!
The 3 koalas in Tasmania are for exhibits. When we were there, they are mostly asleep. Yes, they sleep almost all day and that’s because the food they eat are almost with zero energy content. The koalas are very fussy and only eat a few preferred species of gum leaves. So you see, there’s really not much perks for them to be active, as long as there’s available supply of fresh gum leaves and a comfortable tree branch to sit on, they can nap for as long as they want to…
The Tasmanian Devils
You are in Tasmania! Of course you got to meet them! However, after hearing about the facts of Tasmanian Devils, you really don’t think you want to be born as a Tasmania Devil, oops… The devil is a marsupial, they have a pouch too! The females can give birth to 20 – 30 but as there are only four nipples in the pouch, competition is fierce and few newborns survive. The young grow rapidly and are ejected from the pouch after around 100 days and they become independents at around nine months.
They live in dens and burrows but can’t really dig as good as the wombats. They are carnivorous marsupial but they don’t hunt well and they can’t really run fast. They feed more on roadkill thus making them vulnerable to becoming a roadkill themselves!
There are many other residents at the sanctuary. Eastern and spotted-tail quolls, tawny frogmouths, potoroos, bettongs, snakes and many more, some are now extinct everywhere else. Most of the animals in their care are orphans being raised for release, or injured adults unable to survive in the wild and Bonorong is a place of refuge for these fragile animals.
“NOT JUST LIFE CHANGING… LIFE SAVING”
雪花芬飞的时节 