CRIKEY!!!

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Greetings readers, since the last blog we have continued up the east coast of Australia with our new found friends, stopping at Surfers Paradise (aka Surfers Parasite to the locals, or Blackpool to you and me), Brisbane aka Bris-Vegas, and we are now in Noosa, which is quite a sleepy little place. The weather has been excellent and much lounging in the pool has been achieved.

We have also realised a lifetime dream and visited Australia Zoo, or to those of you not in the know, the zoo of the late great Steve Irwin himself. We got a free bus to the zoo as early as we could and embarked on a truly magical day.

Cat was (again) very excited as she got to hold and have her photo taken with a koala bear, although it did poo on Cat's new top which was very funny. They walk various animals around the zoo, so you can just go up and pet them which is amusing.

The highlight of the day for me was the show in the Crocoseum, a 5000 seat theatre where the bring out animals and show them off. Including a crocodile that tried to eat the keeper, the only downside was that it wasn't the man himself introducing the show. Aside from the obvious Croc show, we also got to see some snakes, the Elephant's and an awesome bird show where they bring out loads of birds and they fly to keepers in the crowd with the prompt of a point of the finger... they even trained a macaw to roll over, which means that it might be possible for the dogs to do it one day!

We saw too many types of animal to name, but I will try anyway as it will fill up some page space:
Crocodiles, Alligators, Wombats, Dingos, Water Dragons, A Komodo Dragon, Asian Otters, Various Birds, Tasmanian Devils, Kangaroos, Koalas and lots and lots of snakes.

One of the strange things is that his image is still everywhere, even the KEEP OUT signs have a picture of him on it, seriously this guy will never die, the amout of merchindise that they must shift is obscene. We visited a couple of days after the 1 year anniversary, and there is a shrine under the Crocoseum with loads of shirts (khaki of course), paintings, messages and flowers, it's really eerie. I myself have a name badge which says 'Steve Crocodile Hunter' which I am going to sew onto my shirt (the zoo keepers uniforms are almost exactly the same as my travel shirt). I also purchased a t shirt stating 'Steve Lives' which I will wear with pride. I would highly recomend a trip there to anybody - Crocs Rule!

Next we are off to Fraser Island to do some self drive Safari, we have been warned by almost everyone who has been there not to swim in the water - something about Hammerhead sharks...

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