Tuesday Evening
Bull Elephant with its Keeper
e were told to wrap up warmly and come to the Main House at a quarter to four, in order to place our orders for dinner and then go off on our first tour, the Sunset tour of the animals being fed and returned to their night quarters from the exhibition areas in the park. The menu for dinner was the first surprise. I had rather expected typical Aussie barbecue style basic food but we had a three course menu with four choices in each course. I had mushrooms stuffed with salmon and sour cream, rack of lamb in plum sauce and Italian chocolate trifle. Mac had the mushrooms, barramundi and sticky date pudding. All delicious. But that was yet to come!
e first visited the four African elephants in their night quarters. One huge bull and three cows, picking up carrots, pumpkins, hay, logs and horse nuts with remarkable efficiency. The bull picked up a whole pumpkin with his trunk, dropped it to break it up and then put away the pieces very quickly. It was great and we were close enough almost to touch them.
Giraffes - (my favorites)
hen we came to my favourites, the giraffes. I love their graceful heads and incredible false looking eyelashes and I was entranced by the opportunity to hand feed them with slices of bread. Me - the one afraid of large dogs, who wouldn't touch a horse or a cow. I held up the bread and it gently licked it (long prehensile tongues) out of my hand I even stroked a neck. It was quite wonderful.
his tour took us much closer to the animals than the general public get, endangered black and white rhinoceros, Asiatic lions, slightly smaller and with less impressive manes (they looked permed) than the African ones (you could hear them roar all over the park though, all through the night) and the cheetah, reclining like a renaissance beauty, looking down her nose at us all. It was just so impressive.
Greg (Our Guide) with the Black Rhino
