We were very excited to do our first stint as volunteers at the Tilligerry Habitat the other day. The Habitat is a wonderful place, it started out as an area that had been sandmined and has gradually been re planted with native plants and is now a beautiful habitat for wildlife. The visitor centre was built of straw bales and the woodland has paths and boardwalks so visitors can enjoy it without damaging any of the flora and fauna. There is also a nursery where plants are propagated for the habitat but also sold to the public. All this work and the running of the place is carried out entirely by volunteers so, now we have a bit more time, we put our names down - there are far worse things than spending a day at this gorgeous place every so often.
We managed to open up and set up without any trouble and looked forward to a day of showing koalas to visitors. We had a look round and couldn't see any but, when one of the people who run the place turned up to check we were OK, we were confident he would spot a couple we could show off. He went for a walk round and returned saying there were no koalas that day but plenty of whelks on the beach. That was a bit of a let down, I'm sure tourists don't travel to this place to see whelks!
There were plenty of birds, however, including black cockatoos and I saw an echidna - my first monotreme!
We didn't have many human visitors but that was no bad thing as the Habitat is a tourist information centre and we will be a bit better informed once we have worked there a few more times and it gets much busier in the summer.