Jamala Wild Life LodgeSaturday 5th March.

I’m woken to a golden sunrise by the screeching a of a dozen white cockatoos, standing in the tree outside my room, head feathers held high. In the distance lions roar. In the lobby, some closer ancestors, two large colobus monkeys with long white feathered tails try and pretend it isn’t morning.

Thursday afternoon we came bouncing into Canberra via Melbourne through some heavy thunderclouds and dramatic flashes of lightning, and were left sitting on the Tarmac for a while, as it was deemed too dangerous for the ground crew to approach our Qantas flight. Even when they let us off it would be another two or three hours before anyone was permitted on to the apron to unload our bags. Fortunately for us St. Simon whisks us into a People Carrier and sends us barrelling off down the road beyond Canberra to our extraordinary destination, a wild life safari lodge perched beside the dam of a beautiful reservoir. For the public it’s the National Zoo and Aquarium of Canberra, but for we lucky few who get to stay here two whole nights it’s the Jamala Wild Life Lodge, where for the even more fortunate you can get to share your quarters with a Bengal tiger, brown lions, a brown bear, a sun bear or a cheetah. Richard Tindale the owner has built special bungalows with glass walls abutting their dens where your animal sleeps right beside you. We sit in one with an extraordinarily beautiful Bengal tiger who doesn’t bat an eye as he lies napping on his straw. After all this is his place. We are the visitors. You can take a bath beside him if you book this bungalow. In fact the place is so popular you can only stay three nights. John brilliantly found it in the Qantas Magazine and being, let us say, less than enamoured of the charms of Canberra suggested we stay here. Mercifully we got the last two rooms, John in the Lemur suite and me the Hyena. I haven’t yet even seen Canberra, though according to our personalised tour guides we play there tonight at a sold out Royal Theatre.

Our day off begins with breakfast on the terrace. Two very beautiful spotted hyenas idly watch us. Shortly we will get to feed these beautiful and friendly animals, who are not the only ones to have received a vile reputation from Hollywood. Meanwhile beneath us we watch four white lions released roaring from their pens each with huge chunks of meat in their mouths, which they take off into separate patches of shade in their pleasant grassy wooded enclosure. Next it’s another pair of white lions, a brother and sister, who romp into their own world. I watch the huge white male patiently ripping apart his fresh meat breakfast, his extraordinary jaws crushing and tearing the food, licking and probing, crunching and chewing, until nothing remains and they sit contentedly licking their chops. Both John and I have a picture taken with Jake, while Misha, the most beautiful female sits placidly by. You’ll be able to see the pictures we took of our trip on their website jamalawildlifelodge.com.au or more likely their face book jamalawildlifelodge.  It might take me a while to get mine over to them but they’ll probably post the Python Feeding Time picture soon.

All the staff led by Maurits de Graeff are charming and helpful but today our guides are Russell Jackson and Renee Osterloh, and they show us through the huge sea water tanks of sharks and the indoor aquarium, and then help us feed two most endearing spotted hyenas. Soon they whisk us away from the public where John is politely denying he is a zoo animal to tourists  wishing to photograph him and we head off on a golf cart to see the new areas under construction. As well as Emus and Elands, and capuchins and giraffes, and lemurs, and Tree Kangaroos from New Guinea, and a wonderfully odd Tasmanian devil, we get up close and personal with two adorable young dingos, we wander amongst the patient wallabies, and then get to meet a cheetah. That’s right. We get to meet a cheetah. Kyle and Amanda give us safety instructions and then we’re in through the gates, patting this most beautiful creature as he chews on a large leg. Luckily not one of ours. Sadly there are only 3,000 of these amazing animals left in the wild, and in fifteen years they may well become extinct. Kyle McDonald and Amanda Hadley explain that this petting programme is part of an outreach programme to teach people about these creatures, who are being killed off by farmers in Namibia and South Africa to protect their goats and sheep from predation. Perfectly understandable he says, and the only way we can save them is from a new programme of providing the farmers with a large breed of heavy dog, which protects the herds and which will see off any cheetah and predator. These dogs are provided free, and food and all vet costs are also supplied by the programme, and so far it appears to be working. No cheetah will risk an attack on a herd which is protected by a large dog, and will go elsewhere. You can contribute to this programme. John and I are considering a suitable name for a dog.

After many moving moments with the cheetah we pose inside the pen for pictures as Pythons, awaiting feeding time. Someone has thoughtfully provided a can of spam. We mug away, and the cheetah comes and sits behind us, perhaps puzzled by the antics of these antique comics. He makes a wonderful purring noise. We do what we can to spread the word. After all surely we cannot let all these wonderful animals just fade into extinction. This place is not only a tourist resort and a zoo, but also part of an integrated conservation programme, so please if you can, support them in the amazing work they are doing. Or imagine a world with no animals.

As a reward for being fed Spam for the cameras we are led to the bear enclosure where we spoon feed sweet food to a gentle and affectionate brown bear, who has, like many of these creatures, been rescued from a Circus. There is very little chance of John and I being rescued from our particular flying circus, but our hosts treat us so kindly and spoil us so much that we spend all day either being fed or feeding animals. Our final exploit of the day is in the Aquarium where an enormous tawny nurse shark is basking on the sand at the bottom of his tank, but is soon wakened by a kick on the side of the glass by Renee and comes racing up for a bucket of crayfish, which he eats with a loud plosive plop, the noise he makes as he sucks in the squid with extremely powerful suction from the reefs where he lives. John gets down and pats this very friendly but enormous tawny shark.

I don’t have time to tell you of all our adventures here, or all about the kind and friendly people who work here, or the great food served up by Sarah, and the amazing Chef, but thank you Teneal and everyone I haven’t mentioned for making us so at home. I can only encourage you all to come and visit this extraordinary place. I wish I was a bit more competent technologically to transfer our many great pictures to this blog, but I can’t dammit. We are going to try and show a few tonight in our stage show, and I’ll tweet a few but I have to rush right now, as it is feeding time with John Cleese and then sadly we have to pack up and run off back to join the Flying Circus…..

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