Bloomin' Tasmania

It's a great time of year to be in Tasmania. Everything is blooming. There's even a free guide I picked up that provides a list and location of all of Tasmania's gardens (60 or more) … from formal, heritage gardens to native, wild bush landscapes … and the peak blooming times for each flower. Tasmania's cool, moist climate offers an ideal growing environment and gardens thrive. We certainly won't have the opportunity to visit them all, but the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens (RTBG) were on my list of places to see. David can be very crafty. So this morning when he said “How about going to the Botanical Gardens today? I've already reserved the courtesy van”, I was immediately suspicious.

“Sure”, I said.

“It's right on the way to Bunnings (a la Home Depot) and ENZED for more hydraulic fittings” he responded without so much as a sneaky grin.

Ah, well, a good compromise and off we went.

It was cold, raw and windy as we trudged from the parking lot to the gardens entrance. The sweet smells of blossoming flowers were everywhere. Rainbow lorikeets flitted from tree to tree on the beautifully landscaped grounds. Despite the gray skies and cold temperatures, the gardens were absolutely lovely. Located high on the Queens Domain, a grassy, woodland area, the RTBG venue was used centuries ago by Aboriginal tribes, their oyster shell middens still observable. Convicts worked here in the early 19th century, their handiwork evident in historic sandstone walls and buildings still standing within the garden grounds.

As Australia's second oldest botanical gardens (Sydney's first), the RTBG were established along the Derwent River in 1818 and encompass over 35 acres. In addition to the more typical botanical garden offerings, the gardens maintain a large Tasmanian flora collection including native orchids and warantah, a type of protea, and the world's only Subantarctic Plant House.

We wandered past what is thought to be the world's second oldest steam-driven carousel in existence. The Gallopers Carousel, originally built in England in 1882, has been lovingly restored and after a stint on the Hobart waterfront, it sits regally in the gardens near the Conservatory. Some people enjoy the thrill of roller coasters. Me, I'll take an elaborately painted horse on a carousel every time. Alas, it wasn't running.

The tulips are in bloom and I don't think we've ever seen such huge ones. They were magnificent. We wandered through a hall of orchids. I always thought they required a hot, steamy environment, but they most assuredly do not as the unheated Conservatory housed thousands of gorgeous, exotic flowers. We passed a lily pond, but no lilies bloomed yet. The ducks and one solitary cormorant didn't seem to mind. The rhododendron flowers along the path were so profuse, the plants could not have accommodated even one more blossom. Hot pinks, nail polish reds, vibrant oranges, even submarine yellow...huge blossoms, some the size of your fist. We could have wandered for hours if the cold didn't finally get to us.

It's early in the season and not everything we wanted to see was in bloom AND the carousel was not operating. So I've obtained a raincheck from the captain for a return visit which I'm sure he'll honor ... the next time he needs to go to Bunnings.

More Bonorong

Birds were everywhere at Bonorong...not all in cages. Lorikeets, galahs and cockatoos squawked in the trees. Injured birds, like a blind tawny frogmouth, were caged, but the rest just stayed around of their own volition evidently appreciating a safe haven and a good food supply. A family of Cape Barren geese (labeled a “vulnerable” species) with five fluffy goslings waddled around, complaining a bit when we got too close. A wood duck couple tended their own flock of downy ducklings. A peacock (definitely not a native, but previously abandoned) wandered the grounds and regaled us with a full 360º tail feather display.

Mac, a staff member on his day off, chatted with us amiably as we approached the spotted quoll area. We'd never heard of quolls (other than a Scrabble word) before arriving in Australia. Another endangered species, these furry little marsupials are pretty amazing. About the size of a small, short-haired house cat with a long tail, they're very fierce predators and and can take down an animal the size of a wallaby by biting it in the back of the neck. We spotted three in the cage and Mac let us get some good photos since he was there. They looked cute enough from a distance. We had no urge to go into their cage after we saw one snarl.

A staff-led tour introduced us to Digger the wombat. His mum was killed by a car. He survived in her pouch until he was rescued a few days later and brought to the sanctuary. He was bottle-fed, thrived and is now nearly a year old. I petted him. His fur is coarse like horsehair. He snuggled in the arms of the handler. As snuggly as he is now, we learned that when wombats reach maturity they are solitary and use their strong, cartilage-plated, armor-like back and sharp teeth to defend themselves against any would-be interlopers including sibs, parents and handlers.

Next we visited a koala. We'd seen them in the wild in great numbers at Raymond Island, but always up a tree and we'd never touched one. They look so cute, soft and fuzzy … and they are. They have little tufts of fur on the tips of their ears and even their long-clawed paws are thickly furred. They look absolutely huggable, but I saw this apparently docile koala nip when the handler tried to remove her from a branch on which she clearly wanted to remain.

A koala is not a bear, by the way, and we've been corrected several times on that misnomer. Koala is an aboriginal word meaning no water”. Since they're tree-dwellers and their diets consists of only eucalyptus leaves, they descend to land infrequently. They receive all of the water they need from the large quantities of these leaves they eat daily. Because the leaves lack nourishment, koalas eat lots and do not expend much energy. In fact, they spend 80% of their time sleeping. The males sound like snorting pigs when they vocalize which really spoils their whole fluffy, cuddly image.

The potoroos look ever so much like rats including a long, fur-less tail tipped in white. In actuality, they're the smallest member of the wallaby family and they definitely hop when they locomote. We saw one with her joey and another potoroo shadowed us around the perimeter of the cage. He followed every move we made and had that hang-dog look of a beggar ostensibly looking for a hand-out.

We hand-fed Forester kangaroos and wallabies in a large enclosed paddock with the kanga-chow provided. We spotted a small shed with a terrarium outside of it. A lounge of lizards (yes, that's the correct collective noun unfortunately) crawling all over each other stared up at us with their yellow-brown reptilian eyes. They were blue-tongued lizards to be precise and other than seeing their eyes and blue tongues, it was hard to tell where one scaly lizard began and another left off. We did not request any petting time.

Not all animals are available all the time at Bonorong. When injured animals are well, they're released. When the young are old enough to fend for themselves, they're released. So it was we did not see bandicoots or pandemelons, but I guess that's good. It means most of them are out there having fun in the bush.

A devil of a day

I saw my first Tasmanian devil today. And I petted a wombat … and a koala. Australia has a slew of unique animals. There are ~200 species of just marsupials here that are found nowhere else in the world. Heck, there are over 60 species of kangaroos alone. Who would have thunk it? We've seen kangaroos, wallabies, koalas and wombats in the wild. But what about potoroos, pandemelons, bandicoots and quolls? I've never even heard of these critters. Have you? My spell checker certainly hasn't. And of course, we'd yet to encounter the famed, but elusive icon of Tasmania, a Tasmanian Devil (and I don't mean Looney Tunes' Taz).

We're not much for zoos any more. We used to enjoy them with the kids, but in recent years, we prefer to see animals in the wild or if not, at least in a wide, open-space preserve. Friends recommended Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, not far from Hobart, to see some animals we might not otherwise get to observe. This facility is truly a sanctuary, dedicated to the preservation of native Tasmanian animals. They accept orphaned and injured animals, nurse them back to health and then release them into the wild again when and if practicable. When they can't be released, they've got a good home for life. They have an active breeding program for endangered species. In fact the name, Bonorong, is an aboriginal word meaning “native companion”.

Bonorong is a pretty unpretentious place. It doesn't provide 4-color glossy brochures or classy souvenir ticket stubs when you pay your $24 entry fee. Instead, handlers, caretakers and volunteers share their time and expertise with the animals and with visitors as they stroll around. The place is clean and the animals look well-cared for … all there for nurturing or nursing. Tasmania, we're told, is the roadkill capital of the world. A small human population, but lots of fast-moving cars and a large nocturnal wildlife population account for 300,000 wildlife deaths per year. Remember the echidna in the middle of the road a couple of weeks ago?

The chances of seeing a Tasmanian devil in the bush nowadays are very slim. A terrible contagious cancer known as DFTD (devil facial tumour disease) has decimated the population, leaving very few healthy devils in the wild. Additionally, they're pretty shy. They estimate that nearly 90% of the population has already succumbed to the disease and those left in the wild are obviously at high risk. They were placed on the endangered species list in 2008. The hope is that the healthy population can be repatriated to other disease-free areas and that Tasmanian devils will not go the way of the Tasmanian tiger.

Devils received their name from early European explorers who heard blood-curdling screams outside their tents at night. The screams conjured up evil images … only a “devil” could sound like that. An interesting fact we learned is that the mother has between 20-40 joeys at a time … all about the size of a grain of rice. These miniscule devils fight their way out of the birth canal and into mom's pouch. The lucky four who attach to one of mom's four teats win the Darwinian race. Talk about a hard way to begin life. No wonder they have bad dispositions.

The devil-wrangler went to great lengths to explain how misunderstood these little guys are. This devil's name was Chompers. The handler coaxed him to climb a tree stump for a reward of a chicken neck which he quickly snatched … and then promptly tried to bite her foot.

Continued tomorrow...