On April 19th I found my way to Mylor, talking a 4 dollar bus trip, to just 30 minutes or so east of Adelaide, in the Adelaide Hills area. My WWOOF hosts Sonia and Max and their son Brooke, have 2 businesses: the ADELAIDE HILLS WILDERNESS LODGE and an animal refuge and snake/reptile and mouse/rat/quail raising business.
This really is a beautiful spot - although the water is not plentiful it is nice and green here. This lodge that Max and Sonia own is a place that school groups or ecology groups can rent out to take animal/ecology/environment classes. A few days ago about 60 young, 16-18 year olds, from northern Africa were here staying here as part of The Migrant Resource Center - a center that helps acclimate immigrants to the area in Adelaide.
So there are groups here at the lodge, but the other business that Max and Sonia are doing, their reptile business keeps all 3 of us WWOOFers busy. This place is a bizarre hub of activity - the family- the WWOOFers - the lodge people - the huge horse-sized dog "Cabal" who is a wolf/stag hound, or also called a kangaroo hound, for hunting kangaroos and I can see why as he is absolutely huge and could definitely tackle a kangaroo - and this house also has a quail incubator in the kitchen and kangaroo milk replacer formula under the sink, and a scrub python in a cage in the kitchen - this snake can eat 18 quail in one setting just to give you an idea of how big he is - and then there is a pesky wallaby out the back door that was bottle fed too long and pulls at your clothes incessently to be fed - and then there is Jack, a very loud ear splitting Sulfur Crested Cockatoo who actually runs on the ground after you for attention - he rips skirts with his beak too if he can get ahold of you - and then there is Roxy, the queen of the house, a red fox that rules the place and sleeps behind the red leather couches during the day. There are so many animals here, all native to Australia, an odd menagerie, but so fun, and I keep finding new animals around every corner that they have not mentioned. Brett you would FLIP OUT about this place! I so wish I could wiggle my nose and poof you over here for just a few days!
I just got an email from my Mom in response to an email that I sent her about this WWOOF place and I really liked what she wrote:
"WOW! What a place! I was just thinking .....What a wonderful children's book that setting would make. Such a cast of characters.....the skirt ripping cockatoo, the ornery begging wallaby, the amazing contents of the incubator and the reason for hatching them, the surprise of finding Roxy behind the couch, the bag of Kangaroo milk replacer in the kitchen and Cable the kangaroo catching dog! Take good photos...I want to hear lots of stories about this place!"
My first WWOOF job here was to babysit this huge DIAMOND PYTHON, to let her move around and be in the sun for awhile. She was a beautiful snake and so graceful. I say she, at least I think this snake was a female. This snake is from southwest Australia. Actually all the reptiles that Max and Sonia have are native to Australia.
KANGAROO MILK REPLACER under the kitchen sink.....I saw this on my first night here at Max and Sonia's and I knew right away that these people loved animals and that this would be a fun place to stay.
This is CABAL the family dog, a stag or kangaroo hound, a beautifully patterned, sweet, quiet and 'lumberingly' huge dog - like a gentle small horse walking around the living room and lying on the large red leather couch.
Another WWOOF job was to tend to the rats, the raising of the rats and mice as food for the reptiles. I liked this part - I knew the rats would be food for the snakes and goannas, but I also thought they were cute and I enjoyed handling them and watching them. We cleaned the cages and helped make new cages as they expanded their system into another building. The cages were great and their system was clean and friendly and well tended to.
We took a break one day and Max took us to the beach. It was a nice sunny day and we had the top down on the Volkswagen convertible - it felt so glorious!
HORSESHOE BAY
all of us WWOOFers, 5 of us, enjoying the beach
I found these really cool SEAGRASS BALLS - formed by the rolling of the waves - I really loved the way they looked and felt - I found 3 of them - I had seen photos of them before but had never seen them in person.
bright pink and zig-zag shaped seaweeds
This photo points to a funny story - on our way to the beach Max went to roll the convertible car top down and it would not completely fold up - I dug around to see what it was caught on and saw that this x-ray was in the way of the roof track - our convertible car top would not fold down because an x-ray of a lizard was stuck in the track! It was really just an everyday, normal thing to this family, but said out-loud it sounded pretty funny.
One WWOOF job was feeding the quails - again food for the snakes and lizards - and some are kept for breeding - these quail are so cute and make really beautiful sounds. I think that I could have stayed in their little pen all day and played with them.
The JACK and WALLABY story in pictures:
Brooke and their Red Tailed Black Cockatoo - not an unusual event to have some animal running around while we are fixing dinner or working on the computers at night. This is what I thought was so great about this family - reminds me of the way that I grew up in Iowa. And Brooke is such a great guy, very smart , a great cook and talented photographer, a computer and video making guru and a parkour artist!
WWOOFers making new cages for the rats and mice - and moving the cages to a new building.
The reality, a little funny and a little odd, reality really, as we put the euthanized rats in a little baggie, vacuum packed for freshness to be frozen and preserved as yummy snake or lizard food.
lots of water bottles to fill
little quail out of the incubator
egg incubator in the kitchen/living room area - always full of eggs - beautiful speckled quail eggs like works of art
newly hatched little squirts all warm and still wet from the egg
young quail under the red heat lamp
young quail
young bobwhite - same age as the quail - and oh so tiny
Jack the Sulfur Crested Cockatoo running after me for attention
POTOROO
member of the genus Potorous
small marsupial with a close relationship with the kangaroo family - looks very much like a bandicoot - that is until it hops away with its front feet tucked into its chest
text from Wikipedia
while I was trying to watch and take a photo of the fascinating POTOROO eating the cockatoo food, Jack was at my feet trying to get attention by chewing a hole in my skirt
Max and Sonia also had a bunch of HOPPING MICE
A hopping mouse or kangaroo rat is any of about ten different Australian native mice in the genus Notomys. They are rodents, not marsupials, and their ancestors are thought to have arrived from Asia about 5 million years ago.
All are brown or fawn, fading to pale grey or white underneath, have very long tails and, as the common name implies, well-developed hind legs. Around half of the hopping mouse species have become extinct since European colonisation. The primary cause is probably predation from introduced foxes or cats, coupled with competition for food from introduced rabbits and cattle. The hopping mouse's primary diet is seeds.
text from Wikipedia
young GOANNAS
walking CABAL is no easy task - like walking an energetic running elephant
Jack is such a character I cannot resist taking photos of him tossing his head and making loud noises - such a character!
Jack and Ayaki, a WWOOFer from Japan
Max and Sonia got a new shipment in of little lizards and they came in this cool wooden box and in these small cloth bags.
JASPER, the SCRUB PYTHON comes out for a visit. He is a huge eater, eating kangaroos out in the wild and Sonia says he can eat 18 quail in one feeding.
This really is a beautiful spot - although the water is not plentiful it is nice and green here. This lodge that Max and Sonia own is a place that school groups or ecology groups can rent out to take animal/ecology/environment classes. A few days ago about 60 young, 16-18 year olds, from northern Africa were here staying here as part of The Migrant Resource Center - a center that helps acclimate immigrants to the area in Adelaide.So there are groups here at the lodge, but the other business that Max and Sonia are doing, their reptile business keeps all 3 of us WWOOFers busy. This place is a bizarre hub of activity - the family- the WWOOFers - the lodge people - the huge horse-sized dog "Cabal" who is a wolf/stag hound, or also called a kangaroo hound, for hunting kangaroos and I can see why as he is absolutely huge and could definitely tackle a kangaroo - and this house also has a quail incubator in the kitchen and kangaroo milk replacer formula under the sink, and a scrub python in a cage in the kitchen - this snake can eat 18 quail in one setting just to give you an idea of how big he is - and then there is a pesky wallaby out the back door that was bottle fed too long and pulls at your clothes incessently to be fed - and then there is Jack, a very loud ear splitting Sulfur Crested Cockatoo who actually runs on the ground after you for attention - he rips skirts with his beak too if he can get ahold of you - and then there is Roxy, the queen of the house, a red fox that rules the place and sleeps behind the red leather couches during the day. There are so many animals here, all native to Australia, an odd menagerie, but so fun, and I keep finding new animals around every corner that they have not mentioned. Brett you would FLIP OUT about this place! I so wish I could wiggle my nose and poof you over here for just a few days!
I just got an email from my Mom in response to an email that I sent her about this WWOOF place and I really liked what she wrote:
"WOW! What a place! I was just thinking .....What a wonderful children's book that setting would make. Such a cast of characters.....the skirt ripping cockatoo, the ornery begging wallaby, the amazing contents of the incubator and the reason for hatching them, the surprise of finding Roxy behind the couch, the bag of Kangaroo milk replacer in the kitchen and Cable the kangaroo catching dog! Take good photos...I want to hear lots of stories about this place!"
My first WWOOF job here was to babysit this huge DIAMOND PYTHON, to let her move around and be in the sun for awhile. She was a beautiful snake and so graceful. I say she, at least I think this snake was a female. This snake is from southwest Australia. Actually all the reptiles that Max and Sonia have are native to Australia.
KANGAROO MILK REPLACER under the kitchen sink.....I saw this on my first night here at Max and Sonia's and I knew right away that these people loved animals and that this would be a fun place to stay.
This is CABAL the family dog, a stag or kangaroo hound, a beautifully patterned, sweet, quiet and 'lumberingly' huge dog - like a gentle small horse walking around the living room and lying on the large red leather couch.
Another WWOOF job was to tend to the rats, the raising of the rats and mice as food for the reptiles. I liked this part - I knew the rats would be food for the snakes and goannas, but I also thought they were cute and I enjoyed handling them and watching them. We cleaned the cages and helped make new cages as they expanded their system into another building. The cages were great and their system was clean and friendly and well tended to.
We took a break one day and Max took us to the beach. It was a nice sunny day and we had the top down on the Volkswagen convertible - it felt so glorious!
HORSESHOE BAY
all of us WWOOFers, 5 of us, enjoying the beach
I found these really cool SEAGRASS BALLS - formed by the rolling of the waves - I really loved the way they looked and felt - I found 3 of them - I had seen photos of them before but had never seen them in person.
bright pink and zig-zag shaped seaweeds
This photo points to a funny story - on our way to the beach Max went to roll the convertible car top down and it would not completely fold up - I dug around to see what it was caught on and saw that this x-ray was in the way of the roof track - our convertible car top would not fold down because an x-ray of a lizard was stuck in the track! It was really just an everyday, normal thing to this family, but said out-loud it sounded pretty funny.
One WWOOF job was feeding the quails - again food for the snakes and lizards - and some are kept for breeding - these quail are so cute and make really beautiful sounds. I think that I could have stayed in their little pen all day and played with them.
The JACK and WALLABY story in pictures:
Brooke and their Red Tailed Black Cockatoo - not an unusual event to have some animal running around while we are fixing dinner or working on the computers at night. This is what I thought was so great about this family - reminds me of the way that I grew up in Iowa. And Brooke is such a great guy, very smart , a great cook and talented photographer, a computer and video making guru and a parkour artist!
WWOOFers making new cages for the rats and mice - and moving the cages to a new building.
The reality, a little funny and a little odd, reality really, as we put the euthanized rats in a little baggie, vacuum packed for freshness to be frozen and preserved as yummy snake or lizard food.
lots of water bottles to fill
little quail out of the incubator
egg incubator in the kitchen/living room area - always full of eggs - beautiful speckled quail eggs like works of art
newly hatched little squirts all warm and still wet from the egg
young quail under the red heat lamp
young quail
young bobwhite - same age as the quail - and oh so tiny
Jack the Sulfur Crested Cockatoo running after me for attentionPOTOROO
member of the genus Potoroussmall marsupial with a close relationship with the kangaroo family - looks very much like a bandicoot - that is until it hops away with its front feet tucked into its chest
text from Wikipedia
while I was trying to watch and take a photo of the fascinating POTOROO eating the cockatoo food, Jack was at my feet trying to get attention by chewing a hole in my skirt
Max and Sonia also had a bunch of HOPPING MICE
A hopping mouse or kangaroo rat is any of about ten different Australian native mice in the genus Notomys. They are rodents, not marsupials, and their ancestors are thought to have arrived from Asia about 5 million years ago.
All are brown or fawn, fading to pale grey or white underneath, have very long tails and, as the common name implies, well-developed hind legs. Around half of the hopping mouse species have become extinct since European colonisation. The primary cause is probably predation from introduced foxes or cats, coupled with competition for food from introduced rabbits and cattle. The hopping mouse's primary diet is seeds.
text from Wikipedia
young GOANNAS
walking CABAL is no easy task - like walking an energetic running elephant
Jack is such a character I cannot resist taking photos of him tossing his head and making loud noises - such a character!
Jack and Ayaki, a WWOOFer from JapanMax and Sonia got a new shipment in of little lizards and they came in this cool wooden box and in these small cloth bags.
JASPER, the SCRUB PYTHON comes out for a visit. He is a huge eater, eating kangaroos out in the wild and Sonia says he can eat 18 quail in one feeding.
