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Published: March 5th 2007
Brisbane River
The far side of the river to the city in an area called the South Bank. There was a lagoon, art gallery and museum that we checked out. Very sophisticated although the art gallery was gash.The trip to Brisbane was the first time since we have been here that we've had to use public transport. We got a bus from Hervey Bay down to Brisbane that left at 5:30 am- luckily my favourite time of the day. The city of Brisbane is pretty similar looking to Sydney and I quite liked it. We were staying in a hostel with a bar and club as part of it and with cheap food available from the bar we never really needed to leave. However we thought it'd be a bit pointless to come all the way here just to spend all day and night in the bar... even though the pool table was free- so we just did that every other day.
In the city there was quite a lot to do, especially if you walked through it and across the river to where all the cultural stuff was like the art gallery, museum and lagoon- all of which were my favourite price (free).
We spent about a week in Brisbane and met a lot of new people, there was still stuff left to do when we left but we can do that when we're flying out of
Japanese Temple
A temple on the South Bank that Japan donated to Brisbane after the war there in August.
Australia Zoo, where Steve Irwin used to run, was an hour journey away on the train from the town centre. We were debating about when we should go, when something happened to make up our mind. We saw a notice on the notice board in the hostel of someone who was driving to Alice Springs (the closest town to Ayres Rock) and was looking for 1-2 people to share petrol. We gave him a ring and organised to leave on wednesday 28th Feb. That only gave us two days to do the zoo, so we booked it for tuesday.
We left the hostel at 7:30 and caught the train from Brisbane central station to Beerwah, where the zoo is located. A courtesy bus picked us up from the station then we got straight into checking out some animals. The zoo is sort of set in a rainforest and all the enclosures are open top so you get to see the animals really well. There are also loads of lizards and birds knocking about in the park that are just wild. Every half an hour, there is a show of some sort going on through the park; they
Brisbane at Sunset
The view from the South Bank after a hard day at the lagoon are usually talks and the animals are brought out close to see or touch them. We watched the feeding of the otters and tortoises before the best part of the day at half 10. In the main square, 4 elephants are brought out and there are big buckets of fruit; if you queue up, you can hand feed them and queue up as many times as you like. It was very impressive to see how accurately they can use their trunk to get the food out of your hand.
After the elephants we saw all the crocodiles in the park. It is obvious why Steve Irwin was called the Crocodile Hunter, because there are more crocs than anything else. There were about 20 different crocodile enclosures and then the main arena called the Crocoseum where the main show took place. This show had bird and snake demonstrations and then the main event when a big crocodile came out and hunted a bit of meat from the trainers hand, just like when Steve Irwin tried to feed his baby to one of them!
After the show we saw the big row of tributes that people had brought for Steve Irwin that
The Elephants
The four elephants walk through the park twice a day to the point where you can feed them. They all walk holding each others tails ran under one stand in the arena. Then, like the zoo in Sydney, there was kangaroo feeding but this time it was in a big field that felt like it was in the wild and there were kangaroos lying about all over the place, waiting for people to bring them their dinner.
The park is 72 acres big although you can easily walk around it in a day. We got to stroke a koala and possum and saw some of the venomous snakes that Australia has... apparaently there are more venomous than non venomous ones- nice news considering we're driving through the outback tomorrow. The most venomous snake in the world is called a 'Fiece Snake'- didn't know that.
Anyway the zoo was really worth doing and after getting some decent sleep tonight, we should be having an early start tomorrow.
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Claire
non-member comment
Hey there!
Hello! hope ur ok! all ya blogs so far hav been amazin to read, sounds lik ya havin a wicked time, u lucky devil, i'm so jealouse hehe! luvin da pics, is that rly a real crock? i did email ya but u might nt hav gt it or simple ur just to buzy to email me bak lol i dnt blame ya! look forward to readin ya nxt blog! take care x0x0x0x0x0x0x0