Carter checks out koalas, kangaroos on special trip at Global Series

HEALESVILLE, Australia – Dindi started to move. The 11.5-year-old koala had started out on a far branch, placidly eating eucalyptus leaves. Suddenly he stopped. He looked over the sea of faces watching him and he set out, after the tiny, supple leaves at the top of another branch, grabbing for them and munching. He crossed over one long branch, then another, unusual for a koala, an animal which can spend up to 20 hours a day sleeping.

It looked like he might come down to the ground, and so the group watching him stepped back, out of his enclosure, out of the way of the sharp claws that allow koalas to climb so readily. He remained up in the trees, though, and the group below left awed.

It was the moment that, among so many others, stuck with Anson Carter as he reflected on a once-in-a-lifetime day in the Yarra Valley of Australia, a region less than an hour from Melbourne and home not only to the Healesville Sanctuary, but a premier wine-growing region.

"So many highlights," Carter said. "I think being up close and personal with the koala. The kangaroos, too. I always pride myself on being an animal person, but seeing a kangaroo hoping along at full speed is kind of intimidating. They weren't going to do anything, but you just never know, they're wild animals. I thought I was going to have my 'Kangaroo Jack' moment and have to fight a kangaroo."

Carter, the former NHL player and current analyst for the "NHL on TNT," is in Australia for the 2023 NHL Global Series, which will see the Arizona Coyotes and Los Angeles Kings play two exhibition games at Rod Laver Arena on Saturday and Sunday. The games are at 12 a.m. ET, and will be available on NHL Network and ESPN+ in the United States, Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ in Canada and 9Go, 9Now, ESPN and the ESPN App in Australia.

On Wednesday, Carter got the chance for an amazing experience courtesy of Visit Victoria, traveling via helicopter to the Yarra Valley, a 20-minute ride starting from a helipad in the Yarra River in the city of Melbourne, traveling from there to the Healesville Sanctuary for animal encounters, and finishing up at winery Levantine Hill.

The red Microflite helicopter's doors slid shut – "Just like my parents' minivan," Carter quipped – and it took off at 9:30 a.m., surprising and delighting some kids walking down the footpath alongside the river.

Carter waved, as the helicopter took off. The kids waved back.

The helicopter soared over Rod Laver Arena, the usual home of the Australian Open, but home this week to the two Global Series games, it passed over cricket and Australian rules football fields, as the homes spread further apart, and the city gave way.

"First stop, Levantine Hill," Carter said into his phone, recording video for social media. "We should be there soon. This is the way you've got to fly. Forget Uber. Forget Lyft. … Get yourselves a chopper."

By 10:20, Carter had pulled into the parking lot of the Healesville Sanctuary, the professed animal lover set on seeing native Australian wildlife, some of the 400 species represented at the sanctuary.

"I feel like a kid all over again," Carter said.

It was there he ran into Dindi. The koala, already older than the eight to 10 years expected life span for koalas, is named after an Aboriginal elder at Healesville, his full name Murrundindi. The name koala comes from indigenous people in Australia and means "no drink" because they don't drink water, getting all their hydration from those eucalyptus leaves.

Most of the koalas in the sanctuary are rescues, with medical conditions or injuries that prevent them from living in the wild. Dindi has been a resident since he was a baby.

"Before I was a dog person, but I'm now a koala person," Carter said. "Marsupials are on my list of pets to try to acquire. But just watching them in their own habitat, watching Dindi climb around, eat, feed.

"Typically, Tamara, who was our host, was saying they're not very active. But to see Dindi walking around and eating, showing off his skills, his agility, looked like Connor McDavid moving around out there, it was very impressive."

His kids, he thought, would be jealous.

"That's one of the first things my kids said to me, is you've got to see a koala and you've got to eat Vegemite," he said. "I've checked both those off my bucket list. Last thing I need to see is a kangaroo."

It wouldn't take long.

The kangaroos bounded across the expanse of grass as Carter entered the enclosure, one staring closely at the people walking along the path. It hopped past a rope and onto that path through the exhibit, bound for a small puddle of water from the rainy conditions, just feet from Carter.

"My mind is blown," Carter said. "I'm so thankful for this opportunity to come and check this out."

Back at Levantine Hill, Carter grabbed a wine glass and took the elevator down to the barrel room, where chief winemaker Paul Bridgeman gave him a behind-the-scenes look at the underground barrel store.

"We're aiming for the perfect blend between stone age and space age," Bridgeman said, of the winemaking process at Levantine Hill, while pouring Carter tastes of the Katherine's Paddock Chardonnay and 2023 Estate Pinot Noir.

The pair chatted about the wine-making process, about their French oak barrels and aging, about how Bridgeman chose the wine industry – "it chose me," he said – and the way the winery is keeping an "element of humanity" amidst the technological and analytic advances in winemaking, followed by a four-course tasting menu.

By 4 p.m., the helicopter was dipping down over the Yarra River, ready to land back at the helipad, ready to deliver Carter back to the business of hockey.

"Just seeing all the various wildlife, the cuisine, just getting an appetite, a taste for what they're like here, if I do nothing else the rest of this trip, I'm happy," Carter said. "I'm going back to Atlanta saying, 'I saw what I had to see, I experienced what I had to see, I did what I had to do.' We wrapped it all in one day."

For Carter, this marks his first time in Australia, his first visit to Melbourne, first to the Yarra Valley. But, he said, "It won't be my last time. I'm going to be back here for sure."