Interesting facts

One of the wonderful things about travelling is that you learn lots of interesting, useful things. I've decided to be generous and to share my new knowledge with you. Today, we're going to talk about koalas.

It's a fact, koalas are not the cutest thing in the world. Baby-koalas are.

A baby-koala is not called a baby koala, it's called a joey (like all the other baby marsupials). Fact.

Koalas are offended when called koala-bears. This was a lesson taught to Phil the hard way. He was working with a 6 year-old kid, when suddenly he saw a koala in a tree, through the window. All excited, he pointed at it to share this wonderdul sight with the little girl and said: 'Oh look, a koala-bear!'

Unimpressed, the girl told him that koalas aren't bears, they're marsupials, and it's not PC to call them so. She then went on singing the ever so famous nursery rhyme: I'm a koala, I'm a marsupial, please don't call me a bear... And Phil will never make the mistake again. Ever.

Spotting koalas in their tree is a skill I am yet to master. Terrii, being the master koala-spotter told us to look for white, fluffy bums. They're still hard to spot.

Koalas are cute to look at, but not cute to listen to as we had the pleasure to realise the other night. The koala sounds like a mix between a pubescent cow in the process of breaking its voice and a pig squeeling during execution. Fact.


This weekend we are going to go wale watching, then a visit to the Gold Coast, followed by the world's number one water-park. We'll let you know all about it...