Koalas – grey, furry, cute, most definitely not a bear but a much loved and treasured icon of Australia.

A trip to this vast nation wouldn’t be complete without seeing a few of the fluffy bundles, and where better than a koala sanctuary, home to well over 100 of them and on the outskirts of Brisbane.

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is only a small place – I was budgeting for just a few hours – but ended up spending my whole afternoon there watching the animals, playing with kangaroos, and even getting a hug from a koala.

It’s a great place to visit, and somewhere that I only discovered after I checked in at the Base hostel in Brisbane city centre. A few travellers had questioned why I was staying in Brisbane for a couple of nights. “There’s not much to do there” and “Its an awful place” were just two of the comments I’d helpfully had passed my way by people on tours or on the Greyhound as I have been making my way down Australia’s east coast.

The truth is, a former colleague of mine, Andy, now lives in the city, and it would be rude to just pass by without at least trying to meet up for a coffee. And besides, when you’re travelling, a stop-off is what you make of it. That’s why, when I saw a pamphlet in the hostel reception for the koala park – and someone holding one of the little animals – it shot right to the top of my ‘to do’ list in the area.

Also near the top of my list was the task of spending as much time away from my dorm room as possible. Despite paying for a 10 bed dorm, someone somewhere thought they were doing me a favour by upgrading me to a four bed dorm. The only problem was that the three others in the room, two German guys and a Russian, quite liked their eastern European hardcore trance music. Their stereo, it seems, only has ‘loud’ or ‘loudest’ as settings.

Without so much as a hello, or even a glance up from whatever artist they were lining up next on the laptop, I walked in, dropped my bags, attempted to make a bed and then gave up, only to walk back out again. I took myself off for a wander around the city centre, taking in the atmosphere and meandering through the busy pedestrianised area full of people enjoying meals in bars and restaurants, sports fans watching the footy on big screens, and quite a few people heading out to nightclubs.

Back in the hostel, things had quietened down, and I worked out that I had been put in a room with three workers. They were carrying out cleaning duties in the hostel, working for their accommodation, a popular way of saving money while travelling when funds run dry. It meant that they were up at the crack of dawn, banging around and turning lights on, but I needed to be up early anyway to cram more sightseeing into my short stay.

The journey to Lone Pine involved finding a public bus and taking a half hour ride out some 15km or so to the park, but it was well worth the effort. Set up in 1927 there were initially just two koalas being cared for here, called Jack and Jill. Now its an internationally acclaimed breeding centre, the world’s oldest and largest koala sanctuary, and the kindergarten enclosure was by far one of the best bits about the day.

Adult koalas, due to their low energy diet of eucalyptus leaves, don’t move around a great deal during the day, but the kids on the other hand are full of life. Leaping around from branch to branch, chasing after each other, trying to climb the fence to escape and general juvenile fun and games means they are very entertaining to watch. You could tell they were developing personalities, even at such a young age. One koala would happily climb to the top of the enclosure, standing proud as king of his castle for hours.

I watched a presentation about the animals, where it was revealed all 130 or so koalas at the park have a name – and the staff know each and every one of them. Now, one koala to the next looks pretty similar to me, give or take a bit of fluff around the ears, or perhaps a smaller nose here and there. However, there’s a way to tell each animal apart.

You have to look at its bum.

Yes, every koala has unique markings around its bottom, lighter shades of grey or white patches arranged in special patterns amid the dark grey fur. The staff revealed they have learnt to tell all of the koalas apart by working out pictures on each of the koalas to remember them by – one of the males sitting nearby was named thanks to his markings looking like a pair of eyes.

Next it was my turn to hold and cuddle one of the koalas. For $16 (£10) you get a photograph of the moment too, and with my hands held out, palms up and crossed together, Violet was placed in my arms.

At first she looked at me, putting her arms around my shoulder and clinging on to my shirt, before she was distracted by the camera. She was the weight of a small dog, but actually felt very stable and happy in the short time she was in my arms. Her fur was short, and slightly rough, and actually felt very similar to the koala cuddly toys that are available in all the tourist shops here. I gave her a rub on the back, before I had to hand her back to the koala keeper.

The best thing about the park is how well cared for the koalas are – they are only ever held by the public for short periods of just a few minutes every few days, and all of the animals I saw seemed so happy.

That included the field full of kangaroos, jumping around all over the place as the sun began to set. It is their most active time of the day, and instead of spending money on food to feed them, I pulled up some grass and held it out. They loved it, and I got quite a few of them bounding over to me.

Somehow I had whiled away an entire afternoon at the park, spending much of the time taking photographs of the koalas. I took that many, my camera died – you just never know when you’re going to get the perfect shot. Besides, they are my mum’s favourite animals, so I had to get plenty of photos to keep her happy. The afternoon was a great way, towards the end of my stay in Australia, to spend some time with some of the country’s most famous animals.

There was another catch-up in store the following day, when I met Andy, a former colleague of mine from when I first started at BBC Look North. He’s the man who would operate the satellite truck out on location, transmitting live reports back to the studio, and in turn, out to televisions across the north east of England.

We only worked together for about a year before he left for Australia, eventually settling, having a family and making a life for himself Down Under.

We’d promised to try to meet up if our busy schedules allowed it, and thankfully he’d been called into Brisbane city centre to run an errand, and so took the opportunity to meet up for coffee.

We had a great time reminiscing about my early days in the Look North newsroom, and Andy appreciated the information I had about all the recent goings on that he’d not heard about. He told me all about the exciting life he’s had here, operating satellite trucks to broadcast sports events from across the Asia Pacific area, even beaming shows such as I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here to homes back home.

“Ant and Dec’s trailer was really close to ours. They’re really nice lads, would always give you a wave and a smile,” he told me.

He told me how I join a huge list of former and current colleagues who have visited him, with around eight or nine mutual friends that have stopped by to say hello since he left Hull in 2006, who, like me, remember a good mate despite the miles between us these days.

“Its been amazing that I’m all this way from the UK, and I might not speak to someone for months, even years, yet they’ll drop by,” he said, smiling.

He admits it can be tough being away from family and friends in his native land, especially when it comes to bringing up a young family and the extra hands close friends can lend, but he’s really happy with his life here. And with near constant sunshine, beautiful scenery and a good job, its easy to see why he’s so happy, and I’m really pleased for him.

After a few hours of telling each other about our current lives, and remembering some of the television projects we worked on – including my first Children in Need outside broadcast in Lincoln in 2005, Andy had to get back to work. We had a few photos in the park near my hostel, before we said goodbye and promised to stay in touch.

With my Greyhound bus set to leave in a few hours time, I booked myself on an economy cruise through the centre of Brisbane to get some shots of the city. It was, of course, my usual trick of buying a regular passenger ferry ticket and just going for a ride. It was onboard a particularly fast ferry, a ‘fast cat’ catamaran to be precise, which afforded great views of the waterfront and exclusive yachts and millionaire riverfront villas that line stretches of the river.

It’s the equivalent of catching the number 16 bus in Grimsby and going for a ride to Asda and back, but it’s a great, cheap way of seeing a place, as well as it being quite fun.

The fast cat was particularly nippy, and I stood on the front deck watching the world go by for two hours, before it turned around and delivered me back into the city centre with just enough time to collect my bags and head to the coach terminal.

Yet again, I was heading south on a Greyhound, this time to Byron Bay. I’m more than halfway back to Sydney, with Byron being my last full ‘east coast’ stop before hitting the city once again and preparing to fly out of the country.