By Ghana's Reporters

With three days to the Commonwealth Games, Plan's youth reporters from India, Pakistan and Ghana set off across the country from Melbourne to Healesville Sanctuary. The day was glorious with the sun out in all its glory, 40 degrees Celsius. "Very hot just like our homes" was the general sentiment of the nine-member team.

We found out from our lovely and knowledgeable guide Madge, that the Healsville Sanctuary is a haven for various wildlife found solely in Australia. Located in an atmosphere of their natural habitats, we — the squad of five girls and four boys with our cameras, notepads and recorders — explored the crevices and creeks of lots of wildlife including the emu, papyrus, the koala, the dingos and the kangaroos.

The koalas, who sleep 19 hours a day and eat about one kilogram of eucalyptus leaves daily, did not even notice us. They slept as we clicked away with our cameras. The emu is very much like the ostrich, said one of our Pakistani friends. The kangaroos were a centre of attraction for all of us because of their fame. We had all heard about them before this trip and so we were very interested in seeing them with our own eyes. And we were not disappointed. They look a bit like our goats back home but they have a very heavy tail, which helps them to walk.

One kangaroo in particular played to the spectators by posing beautifully and allowing us to take personal shots for our journals, friends and family. However, we did not see any of them carrying their babies in their pouches.

Sophia Opei: The Sanctuary reminds me of the Mole Game Reserve in Northern Ghana. The animals at Mole include elephants, wild pigs and baboons and are all from Ghana and they move around in their natural habitats as freely as their Australian counterparts.

Enoch Mahama: I loved the idea of seeing all these Australian animals living in one place. The long-beaked birds, which look like the white Ghanaian bird, follows cattle and was so cheeky. It actually took a peck at Fatimata (from the Ghana team). She squealed first from terror and then delight when she found out that the bird was only trying to invite itself to her picnic.

Fatimata Bolly: I wondered why the red-tailed black cockatoo was chosen to be the mascot of the Commonwealth Games but when I found out that it is the voice representing other endangered species of the environment I felt a sense of empathy. The cockatoo and us children from developing countries have something in common, our rights are not always fulfilled, especially our right to participate effectively in our communities is limiting because in our countries we children are the voiceless. Children are usually seen but not heard. Our views, especially those of us from poor rural communities are not sought because the grown-ups think that because we are small our brains are also small, and so they think that we have nothing sensible to say. But like the cockatoo, we children too have something important to contribute to society, our youth and refreshing ideas.