Brisbane for Christmas and Boxing Day

From Hervey Bay/Fraser Island we drove down to Brisbane to celebrate Christmas and Boxing Day...albeit one day earlier than at home!

On Christmas Day we went off to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary...probably the most unusual Christmas Day we have ever spent.

These are "flying foxes" which are fruit bats...they are HUGE!!  We couldn't get over the size of them...hard to tell here, but their bodies are at least twice the size of a big squirrel and their wings are huge!  We have seen people riding bikes with their helmets and the helmets have spikes on them...supposedly to protect themselves from being attacked by these and birds!

 Australia has some absolutely beautiful flowering shrubs and trees. This is a bit blurry, but you get the picture.

 Here's what we really came to see!

 I got to hug a real live Koala on Christmas Day...how many people can claim to have done that??

 These lizards were roaming everywhere.

 This is a  cassowary, third largest bird in the world and almost extinct.

 'Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree-ee, merry merry king of the bush is he-ee'...someone should write a song about them!!

 Koalas have 2 opposable thumbs on each front leg...who knew?? They also are marsupials, like kangaroos...didn't know that either.

 How could you possibly be comfortable in this position??

 These are not the boxing kangaroos, apparently!

They ate right out of your hand...then you had to quickly find somewhere to wash off all the kanga-saliva!!

 On Boxing Day we went for a little walk-about Brisbane.  They've done a fabulous job with the river's edge with a walkway/park area on both sides for much of the way. These boats were all moored fore and aft to pilings.  Apparently the river is subject to flood and in 2011 there was quite a flood in this area with the water being at least 3 or 4 metres higher and about 1 or 2 metres in the streets.

Just a beautiful walkway along the banks.

This is Streets Beach which is also along the river's edge and walkway. Expo 88 (two years after ours) was held in this area.

 We took a ride on the big ferris wheel (for some reason the photo of the wheel won't load on here correctly).  This is us at the top.

 This is the view over the river from the top.

That is Streets Beach from the ferris wheel.

This is one of the two pedestrian/bike bridges crossing the river.

Ever onward...we leave tomorrow and heading south toward Sydney.  We've planned for a stop in the Hunter Valley wine area, on to Jenolan Caves, then into Sydney for New Years!