The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of WIldlife Parks

Hobart Sun 7th Dec

Although I had been unable to get booked on the 'Day with the Devils' CVA tour I was still determined to try to do at least the first part of the tour myself which involved going to a wildlife park near to Hobart. The day did not go according to plan but has left a lasting impression on me for all the wrong reasons.

The bad - Bonorong wildlife
A visit to Bonorong was supposed to be part of the 'Day with the Devils' so naturally that was the place I was wanted to go to. What I found made my heart sink slightly. Instead of a state of the art wildlife sanctuary that I thought I was going to I found a rundown and badly laid out mess. Having already been to natureworld near Bicheno this sorry place was a pale imitation for the same price.

I was given a bag of kangaroo food to use as I went around but I ended up giving most of that to a mother and her kid as I just couldn't get enough kangaroos to come anywhere near me. The aviaries were especially bad being small and dark. All the enclosures looked in need of repair and I could find little or no information on the animals I was looking at.

I did see the Tasmanian devils and one of the keepers gave a pretty good talk on them. I think they at least are treated well. This place could be so much better with a little bit of effort.


Bare walking areas


Bare enclosures


Caged Cockatoo

The Ugly - ZooDoo wildlife park
After Bonorong I felt I had to try to get to a good wildlife park and I remembered passing one on the way to Port Arthur with the guided tour. On my way there I happened upon ZOODOO fun park and decided to take a look.

I think this picture sums up this park:

This place is a business based on the exploitation of animals pure and simple.

As soon as I arrived I felt a shiver run through my spine. They were getting ready for the pony race in which they sent miniature ponies with cuddly toys on their back around a warehouse track over hurdles. One of the guys used a sort of streamer to get the ponies to race round. I felt sick.

Pony derby

Ponies being 'helped' around track

Right outside the pony track they have a small petting farm where the kids can go and stamp on guinea pigs and rabbits. Beside it they had this for show

Look at the cute ponies

You too could have a cute pony

Or what about ducklings - no questions asked

The place was full of bogans and their kids running around without any supervision. I seen one fat kid throwing his kangaroo feed at the tasmanian devils while his mother video taped it. His sister (who I think was called Chalice!) simply threw her's over the wall.

feed me

I'll hide in here

Common Marmoset

Please do put your fingers through the cage

How many birds can we get into this shed

The places biggest attraction is a pair of Tigers in TIGERLAND which is a large steel enclosure. In their favour they do have some information about the plight of tigers but it is little in comparison to the amount of space given over to merchandising their cats.

Tigerland

View of main enclosure

Enough Merchandise for ya?


Lets have some trophy heads - that'll make the kids think twice about hunting!

I am sure that all the animals in this place are treated in accordance with Australian cruelty laws but the simple fact is that this place should not exist in this day and age. It is one step up from a circus and parts of it are little more than a managerie.

I felt really angry after my ordeal at ZOODOO. Thankfully the next place was a lot better.

The Good - The Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park
Although this place was a bit pricy at $24 it had a good feel and look to it. I arrived just in time to see their free flying bird display. Some people might immediately say 'hey this is exploiting animals for show' and they would be right except for two things:

1. The birds displayed here were all brought in injured - including a peregrine falcon with only one wing.

2. These birds are free to fly off any time they wish which they do not. (To be fair the one winged peregrine might have a bit of a hard time flying off!)

The place is currently being totally upgraded which meant that some areas were off limits but the places I seen were generally well laid out and the had excellent info on Devils and a even info on the tyhlacine.

My only criticism would be that once again some of the bird enclosures were too small. I only wish the other two places were as good.

Tawney Frogmouth

One Winged Peregrine

Brown Falcon

Eastern Quolls sleeping

Can you guess what they are!

After the Conservation park I decided that because I was down that way I would retry out the remarkable cave. It was still off limits.

Back in Hobart I Bumped into Brian in the Sydney hotel. He was heading out to find another jazz band after some food. I stayed and watched a very good blues ensemble - my type of music. Unfortunately because it was Sunday the pub shu up shop at 9.30 so I was stuck with having to go to bed pretty early.


GLOSSARY UPDATE
B
Bogan Noun. Aussi term. A bogan is the Australian equivalent of chav or skanger or spide - basically a twat. Here is the wikepedia info

Hobart 4th-5th

For my return to Hobart I tried a different backpacker place called Narrara which was according to rough guide 'Friendly and secure with an amiable live in manager and free internet access' What a load of shite. I think the amiable manager grunted when he took my money off me. The internet access was a horrible slot machine PC which gobbled money. My dorm room was a complete mess with no lockers and the door constantly ajar. I managed to bang my head getting into bed that night. Not an unusual thing as I tended to do that in bunks - except I was on the top bunk and I hit it off the ceiling! The ceiling was so low that I could reach out and touch the smoke detector from my bunk. It was a great feat of my will power not to set it off!

I decided I had to get out of this place and tried ringing the pickled frog backpackers only to be told that they had no room. In the end I went for a couple of drinks in another place mentioned in the guide, the new Sydney Hotel and decided after a couple of pints to stay there for the rest of my duration in Tasmania - so finally after 4 months travelling I had ended up sleeping above a bar. Not just any bar either - its an Irish bar! Except its not really.

Why the Sydney Hotel is not an Irish bar - A Ray Rant.

1. In the Sydney Hotel I overheard one of the barmen asking some punters not to swear. In an Irish Bar you are thrown out if you don't swear.

2. In the Sydney Hotel the number of people dwindled towards the end of the night. In an Irish Bar the number of drunks increases. Also people in Irish bars tend to order double rounds at the end of the night.

3. The Sydney Hotel has a decent selection of beers. Irish Bars have Gunniness and a poor selective of piss waters such as harp or Bud.

4. The Sydney Hotel does not sell Tayto Cheese and onion crisps - a crisp so potent that it induces an oniony burp that can clear half a room. Add it to a Guinness fart and you have nobody left standing in a 50 yard radius.

5. In the Sydney hotel guys were drinking out of half pint glasses. I am nearly sure that its written in the Irish Constitution that no man is allowed to drink out of half pint glasses. I believe it goes something like 'And Verily no Irish male shall be allowed to drinkth beer out of vessels less than 1 fluid pint. Any man found doing so shall be forever labeled a big girls blouse - so shall be the law'.
In Belfast people would just laugh at anyone who tried to start a fight with a broken half pint glass.

Still it was a nice bar.

The next day was my last day of renting the hire car and I was supposed to go down the Huon trail. I quickly moved my stuff out of the Narra Backpackers and headed out of the city. Of course this being Tasmania it bucketing down all morning and I eventually decided that enough was enough and turned round to head back to the city.

The sun came out in the afternoon just as I was unpacking into the Sydney Hotel (bloody typical!) The backpacker accommodation upstairs was ok - I had what I thought was a large room to myself. There was no real kitchen. What they had instead was a bunk room (with beds) where they had placed a fridge, a toaster, a kettle and a microwave - all that the great Raymondo, chef extraordinaire would ever need.

Once I got settled in I went for a final small drive in the car before returning it to the depot. Then I went to the library to get details about the local CVA office. I had booked myself on a CVA 'Day with the Devils' tour on the Sunday and I wanted to find out where I was to meet.

I eventually got in touch with Sarah in the main office (who was on the grampian getaway trip with me) only to be told that the tour had been cancelled due to lack of people. What was really annoying about this was that I had specifically planned the dates for this whole trip to Tasmania in order to go on this tour. The one the previous week was full up and as it happened so was the one the following week. Only my week did not have any people! I had also hoped to go on the CVA's monthly walk that they hold the first Saturday of each month - only that was full up!

So I was now stuck for anything to do over the weekend in Hobart.

To make matters worse I was no longer alone in my dorm room. The new occupant turned out to be an old retired English guy called Brian who was there for the weekend. I wouldn't have minded too much about this. He was, after all, a nice enough person who seemed to have had a very interesting life which included travelling the world in the merchant navy. However I have to say that he was incredibly boring and had one of the worst comb overs I have ever seen. I would sometimes tune out from his talking:

Brian: I was in Cape town once....
Me (thinking) Thats a really bad comb over!
Brian: I do poems you know....
Me (thinking) Why do people have them things
Brian: I love honey - do you know honey never goes off
Me (thinking) I mean why! What was that about honey?
Brian: I have even written a poem about honey
Me (thinking) Oh Jesus please don't!
Brian: I can't remember it however
Me (thinking) Thank god for that!

I quickly decided to go out for some food and spent a while walking around the town until ending up getting cheap Indian food.

When I got back to hotel the place was packed with work xmas parties and a middle of the road band was playing while drunk people danced. I had a couple of pints and was just starting to warm up to the band (ie drunk enough not to notice) when the place closed! It was only 12 on a Friday!

BEERS I HAVE DRUNK
Moo Brew Dark Ale: New Sydney Hotel - Even better than Boags Wizard
Bluetounge Ginger ale: New Sydney Hotel: Got very sickening very quickly

Taronga Zoo - the return!

Even though I had a sore knee I still had to go to Sydney Zoo which is on the other side of the harbour. in 2000 I came to Austrlia on a whirlwind tour for 4 weeks. One of the things I did while in Sydney was go to the zoo. I thought it was quite a good set up until I arrived at the elephant enclosure. It was there that I witnessed one of the elephants pacing back and forward. It was obviously stir crazy. I stayed watching it for nearly 20 minutes - it was a very harrowing thing to watch.

So, not because I wanted to but because I had to I caught the ferry back to Taronga zoo. I got the cable car up to the top of the zoo and started making my way down to the bottom looking at all the different enclosures on the way. Some of the animals had really large settings - especially the apes. But some of the enclosures were still just glorified cages. The elephant enclosure still looked too small but at least the elephants looked sane. I read about all the things they did to try to keep them amused - games and baths and hiding their food so that they had to search for it.

I was going to give the zoo a tentive thumbs up for being on the whole good - until I got to the tiger enclosure.

There I seen their single tiger pacing up and down in front of its encloure. I took a video but its too long to place on the blog - it would take a day to download!

While there are animals in this state in zoos I will never be a fan of them. With all the tv programs there are today and the information you can get at the click of a finger through the internet I no longer see the need for zoos that have animals purely to amuse the public.

caged desert fox

Australian Museum

OK I have been persuaded to continue the blog - My friend Gavin gave a good argument in that the more time I spend doing the blog the this time I spend drinking so I am in fact saving money by doing it! As I won't be making any money from it anymore I can be as un PC as I want now and tell it how it is. I'll try to keep it as near as possible to the way it was.

Anyway here's an unfunny post:

As it was just round the corner and as it was raining on my first full day in Sydney I decided to go to the Australian Museum. Its basically a natural history museum complete with lots of stuffed animals - mostly Australian birds. They also had the usual boring mineral exhibition and of course a dinosaur display.

There was a whole section of the museum dedicated to the indigenous people of Australia (indigenous rather than aboriginal due to the inclusion of the Torres island people). It had the usual display cases of artifacts and talked quite a lot about "the dreaming".

One exhibit stood out because if was quite upsetting - the Australian protection board part. It was set out as a sort of maze of paintings and told about the forced taking of aboriginal children so that they could be educated to be more like whites. I knew about some of the atrocities done by the white settlers to the aboriginals but I thought that this was particularly shameful. I took some pics of the exhibition - its easier than writing things down (you may need to zoom in on the photos)









And on a lighter note - here is DM fighting with a velociraptar - bad DM!

Booking agents Rant

Time for another rant!

Conservation Holidays aren't cheap but I always thought that most of the money you hand over when booking one went to the project or organisation that you were working with. How wrong was I! It seems that all those great websites that have all these wonderful volunteer projects - both conservation and humanitary take up to 60% of the money themselves and give nothing in return.

Organisations like I-to-I, GVI or Gapyear take the lionshare of your money for doing next to nothing. All they are is glorified booking agents. A lot of them don't even give you information on how to travel to your project - they just take the money and run.

Enkosini as a booking agent seem to take the least percentage and at least you know any profit goes to conservation but I would not bother with any of the other sites.

My advice is if your going to go for a volunteer holiday then find what you want through the booking agents site then trace the actual organisation and contact them directly. If they say that you have to go through their booking agency then tell them to go Fuck themselves! There are plenty of places that you can go to (eg Eco centar in Croatia) without giving a shitload of your money to a third party so they can piss off to Benidorm in a big yacuht

Shower of Bastards thats what they are.

It's a greyhounds life

Its Ranting time:

Until I started volunteering at the DSPCA I did not think there was anything wrong with greyhound racing. In fact I thought it was a good nights entertainment. You could drink (naturally!) and do a bit of gambling. I would even suggest it as a possibility for works outing.

I no longer think that way:

This is what happens to a lot of them when they are no longer able to race or have just not made the grade. These are the lucky ones because they are at the DSPCA they will be kept until a home is found.

Others are sent to dog pounds where they are put down. Others have an even worse fate - Heres a poem I nicked off one of the numerous greyhound rescue sites:


Racing days are over
Thought the pain would go away
But soon I learned a different fate
Was headed straight my way

He reached his hands into my cage
And pushed me out once more
I glanced at all my weary friends
As he led me out the door



It hurts to walk; it hurts to stand
Been through all I could endure
But all my pains are nothing that
Somebody's love could not cure

I'm pushed against a concrete wall
And know I've failed the test
He said I wasn't fast enough
And reached into his vest



I close my eyes and cower
As I shake, my senses dull
Then I feel the barrel of a gun
Against my skull

Isn't there a better way
To entertain a crowd?
But my thoughts are interrupted
By a noise so hard and loud



I'm just another failure
Racing to my final day
And sometimes all the winners
Will lose a race someday

They call it an "exciting sport"
They say that it's humane
But a sport that always ends in death
To me, is not a game
(c) Addie Patricia Asay



Maybe the next time you will think twice about going to the dogs for a night out.

A Canadian Club that will make you sick! (other than the whisky)

Well my first week of my year out is nearly over and to be honest all I have done is get drunk! Leaving dos at work, leaving dos with friends - just about any excuse for a piss up. Today will be the first day that I have not woken up with a hangover so I think its time to get this conservation stuff started.

Last Friday afternoon while I was in between gigs I went down to Dalkey harbour and sat watching the seals. Even took a couple of photos.

So here is a not too good picture of a grey seal (Halichoerus grypus, meaning "hooked-nosed sea pig"!)



Seeing these timid looking animals reminded me of what the Canadians are doing to their relatives at this very moment so I am going to make this post my first official RANT.

The following video shows baby seals being clubbed to death for their pelts - not food. It is not for the faint hearted.



Here's a link that shows what goes where and who makes uses them.

http://www.harpseals.org/hunt/pelts.html

Luckily I don't know anybody rich enough to own a prada bag. Mind you a friend of mine did go into a prada shop in Milan once and enquired about the price of a bag to which the reply was 'If you need to know the price then you can't afford it'. Aunts!