Wet weekend!!! - Koala bears

Man, it poured down here this weekend, much to the annoyance of every Ozzie in melbourne (although the water companies must have been relieved, as the state of Victoria is having a drought, with their reservoirs less than 50% full).

I, on the otherhand, being from the North East of England didn't really care and emjoyed my weekend regardless.

Friday night I went out with a few people from work and ended up getting back home at 3am in the morning, a bit worse for wear. 3hours later i had to get up for a full day trip down the Great Ocean Road. Armed with come metaclopromide (an anti-sickness drug), some paracetamol and lots of water i just made the bus pick-up rendezvous in town. I slept most of the journey until we got to Bells beach - a famous surf beach and holiday destination for Melbournians.

Next stop was a caravan park, strnage place to stop you might say, but the reason was because there were lots of bare eucalyptus trees in that area. Apparently, lots of bare eucalyptus trees means only one thing ..... lots of dozy wild koala bears. Sure enough, the sleepy little fellas were having their regular 19 hour snooze, not batting an eyelid at all the commotion below.

Koalas are funny little things, despite them being extremely cute and fluffy, they have some interesting evolutionary adaptations. The main one is a reflection of their diet. Koalas only eat eucalyptus leaves (and are very fussy about which types of leaves they will eat), and these leaves are not very high in energy at all. Therefore the koalas have to minimise their daily effots and conserve energy. Their body has adapted in a way that also minimises energy usage. A normal brain will use 25% of an animals energy. To counteract this massive loss of energy the koalas have evolved to have really tiny brains, and therefore are actually as dozy as they look. Ontop of that, allegedly, eucalyptus has cannaboid properties, if this is true, it means that not only are koalas naturally stupid, they are almost always constantly stoned too!

There were some horrific bush fires in this part of Victoria not so long ago, the majority of the flaura was wiped out, most homes were lost and many people were killed. The people who didnt die fled to the beach to wait for the fire to die out. Not only did the people flee to the beach, but so did all the animals in the area. Imagine having to share a beach with kangaroos, snakes, lizards etc! Unfortunately there was one animal that didn't have the insight to flee, yep you guessed it, the koala. The majority of koalas within that range perished during the bushfires.

Anyway thats enough about koalas for now