Continuing though the Yarra, we stopped at the Healesville Animal Sanctuary, which has a real-life animal hospital to rival anything they've got going on at St Tiggywinkles.
Now bear with me here because when I was a kid (okay, probably well into my teens as well), I dreamt of visiting an animal hospital because I genuinely thought it would be full to the gills of poorly hedgehogs tucked up in miniature hospital beds with gingham sheets and tiny thermometers under their tiny tongues. Yeah, yeah, I know, ridiculous isn't it? I realise now they'd use rectal thermometers for wild animals.
The sanctuary at Healesville receives government funding to treat injured wildlife from a wide area in the Yarra Valley and beyond, the admission price covering most of the day-to-day running of the place. 75% of the animals coming through the door have been injured by vehicles on the road.
As soon as he saw the tiny operating theatre, Batman revealed his true identity to the receptionist, who quickly fetched one of the vets to open up the theatre so our caped crusader could fiddle with the oxygen tubing, discussing anaesthetic gases with the sort of glee he reserves for the switches on all those beeping machines he carries in the back of the batmobile when he's out on patrol.
Ella and I wandered off to look at a joey who was being nursed in a sheepskin pouch to emulate it's (presumably dead) mother. Batman returned to tell me they'd had an admission, a trauma. Did I mind if he stayed to watch the surgery?
They anaesthetised the galah, as you can see, but the injury to his wing was too serious so they put him to sleep forever. I suppose Rolf Harris stories don't always have a happy ending either.
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