Crikey! It's Australia Zoo!

On our way to the zoo we came to the town of Noosa, a right little tourist mecca and no mistake. What drags all these fair dinkum Aussies here? The beach is a corker, the river with its lazy sandbanks, birdlife and fishing is stunning and there's a gorgeous little National Park running from the town along the coast, where you can catch a glimpse of a whale or a dolphin if you're lucky (we saw a dolphin). We found a cracking little campsite by the river and the next day got up early to give the hoards a miss and headed to the Park for a walk. We had a spring in our step that morning, we were on a hunt, a hunt for the illusive Koala! We had seen signs around telling us they were here, so walking along the coast we craned our necks staring up into the tall, silvery Eucalyptus trees hoping for a glimpse. These fella's are hard to spot, for one they're grey like the tree bark and so blend in very well, also, they tend to sleep for 20 hours a day! Obviously this means they don't move about much, making them even harder to spot, but luck was on our side. Having only walked about 100 meters along the path I spied what at first I thought was a big knot in the tree branch, on closer inspection it proved to be a Koala! We were well excited and spent ages looking at the little fella. I took the opportunity to use some of my recent naturalist skills learnt in Borneo from the Orang Utan spotters and taking off my shoe, thwaked the tree until the Koala woke up :) looking very confused and tired. A bit cruel I know, but 20 hours sleep? There's a time to sleep and a time to wake up and see the 2 tourists waving at you from below. The top photo is from Australia zoo, it was too cute not to put on and the other one is just after the wild one woke up :)

Australia Zoo was originally built in the 70's by Bob Irwin and was primarily a reptile house. Steve Irwin took over the management of it in the early 90's from his Dad and using his growing fame funded the redevelopment of the place. Basically whatever you think of zoo's, it's a corking place and the standards are very high, it's almost as good as Singapore Zoo (still our No.1). It was a great day, but definitely tinged with a bit of sadness, especially when we saw all the Kharki shirts on display with messages from Steve's friends and admirers. He was a bit of a wally, but it seems to me that he did a lot for wildlife protection and conservation and also made me laugh a lot as he chased 'naughty' snakes and 'cranky' crocs.
The zoo itself is mainly devoted to Australian animals, but does have Tiger and Elephant enclosures too. Like a lot of Australian tourist attractions it's a great place for kids and there are endless opportunities to stroke animals. So we did! We both went up and stroked a Koala (how could you not?) and got our photo taken, but sadly I can't publish it on the blog as I've come out looking particularly evil, looking like I'm wanting to kill the Koala, so instead I thought I'd put this delightful image of Samantha and her Kangeroo friend. As well as animal petting, also on offer is croc feeding, although you don't get to feed it the beast. As seen on Steve's TV show's you get to watch a chap demonstrating the crocodiles 'natural' behaviors in the wild, which entails standing near the water and watching the croc slowly moving under the surface and then getting well out of the way as it comes in for the kill. The croc was called 'Acco' and was Huge! About 16ft long, it was a true monster and was fed 3 whole chickens and a rabbit just during the show (all dead). The bloke feeding the croc looked uncanily like Steve Irwin too which made it all the more surreal.
Next up was the Venomous Snake House, featuring all the deadliest snakes in Australia. Flan you would have loved it! Normally the snake section of a zoo can be a bit boring as snakes tend to lie there doing nowt, to our happy surprise these ones were up and about, slithering all round their enclosures. It's always more interesting looking at snakes when you know that they're all utterly deadly, obviously numero uno king daddy of the snake world, the Brown snake was there, which can basically kill you just with a look! According to the zoo, the 3rd deadliest snake is the Taipan (pictured) which is also insanely deadly and can kill you with the power of its mind! It also has arguably the coolest name, although the Death Adder comes a very close 2nd on that score.

To finish our day off we popped over to the Tiger area where they were demonstrating different skills and abilities of their tigers. The tigers have been hand reared by their keepers, so that they're used to having them in in their enclosure, not something I've seen before. If the tigers feel like it, then they'll play along with the keepers, who get them to show off by using milk. One of the blokes help up a carton of milk against a tree and the tiger was up on its hind legs having a drink, which showed how massive it really was. The tigers had a big pool as well, right against the glass of their living area and they got them to swim about in it and also by chucking in a massive ball, the tigers were leaping into the water after it, which was pretty impressive to watch. I noticed one tiger seemed to take a liking to a small boy, I'm not sure how long the boy would have lasted with the tiger :)
I was going to say I'm sure we'll get bored with all this wildlife stuff at some point, but I think we're more and more obsessed with it every day, I'm even catching myself liking birds, the most boring of all creatures. I still hate moths and wasps and in fact plan their downfall every day! Mwah hah ha!!!

Australia Zoo Slideshow



Listening to: Orbital - The Blue Album