Had a great day at Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary. Quite a drive about 75kms NE of Craigieburn. A pretty drive. The weather held for us as they were predicting thunderstorms but as it turned out it was a perfect day for wandering around the park. Healesville purely focuses on native wildlife and all of their animals have been bought to them for rehabilitation and released where possible and those that can’t stay at the park for educational purposes. The sanctuary is at the forefront in Tasmanian Devil research. Unfortunately the devil is in a perilous dilemma with a disease called the facial tumour which is devastating populations in Tasmania. It is a cancer that is highly contagious and there is no vaccine, treatment or cure, the result is a painful death. The sanctuary is breeding healthy devils and in the event the devil is wiped out in Tasmania they will be able to repopulate with healthy devils. Very sad to think this is happening but it encouraging to see many groups are doing all they can to save them. The park is very passionate about saving the devils. During the day there are many talks with the keepers but unfortunately we couldn’t do them all. There is a great platypus exhibit but we couldn’t take photos as it was too dark and you can’t use flash in the exhibit. But we saw at least two. They dine on yabbies and there were heaps in their tank that they were gobbling through. Of course lots of kangaroos, a few koalas, wombat, dingoes. It is a great park and the day flew. One of the highlights is the animal hospital. It is so well equipped probably puts some local hospitals to shame. The vets and nurses who work there are so dedicated and obviously very experienced with native wildlife. Many carers are attached to the park and whilst we were there one came in with a brushtail possum and another with a joey who were there to see the ophthalmologist. They even had a frog with a dodgy eye waiting to see the specialist. Carers are welcome to visit at any time with their animals and make their lives as carers so much easier. The two big wildlife groups in Victoria are Wildlife Victoria and Help for Wildlife. The big thing is to rehabilitate and release where possible and any animals/birds that have to euthanised are used for research purposes. At set times during the day the public can view staff doing evaluations on animals/birds bought in and/or operations via a screen setup outside of their consulting and operating rooms. The vet explains beforehand what they are going to do and afterwards tell you what the outcomes area. Whilst I was there they were evaluating a kookaburra that someone had dropped in. It was very thin and they suspected it had been hit by a car. The vet had come out and explained the circumstances and what they were going to do. On the screen you could see them anesthetising it and checking it over, they took an x-ray. Afterwards the vet came and told us that that judging by its injuries it would have been hit about 5 days ago and would have been on the ground since then and that it was 1/3 less in weight than it should have been indicated that it wouldn’t have eaten in the time since it was hit. It had five fractures in one wing and a dislocated shoulder. The wing could be fixed but the shoulder not so easy to mend and she doubted it would make it successfully. Unfortunately the vet decided the best thing was euthanasia. It is extremely interesting. Shame there aren’t more facilities like this around the country. All the animals they work on are bought in via carers the public and of course animals in the park. After this we were planning on driving to Marysville (one of the towns destroyed in last years fires) but by this stage it was quite late in the day and Marysville was another 30kms away and the threatening rain had started so we heading in that direction and once we saw some of the forests that had been burnt stopped and took some photos as we wanted to get an idea of how it was recovering. It was amazing to see how green the forests were particularly when you see how black and parched the supporting tree trunks are. Nature is quite wonderful how it picks itself up and gets on with it. It is quite lovely in the hills area around Healesville, Marysville and the proximity to the city (1 hour drive) makes it doable. It is easy to see why people want to live in these areas (9000 live in Healesville) but you can see how quickly these towns would have been destroyed and there was not chance to get away from the fires. The wildlife sanctuary had to put their fire plan into action and moved their 200 animals to parks closer to the city. This is the first time in 75 years they had had to do this. The park and its carers took in many injured animals and up until recently were putting food and water drops in fire affected areas for the native wildlife. This area reminded us a little of the Pemberton area except much more lush and denser forests.
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