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Published: October 21st 2008
Glass House Mountains
A quick side trip before going to the zoo.Aussie Adventure - Part VI - Australia Zoo - October 8, 2008
What a fun day! I think this was one of the big highlights from our trip. The zoo opened at 9am but since we were on the "early to rise" schedule, we took an early morning detour to see the Glass House Mountains. They are what is left from volcanic activity millions of years ago.
The Australia Zoo was created in the 1970s by Steve Irwin's parents as a reptile park and became the Australia Zoo in 1992. It has continued to grow year after year and is such a tribute to Steve Irwin's life and his passions. All of the animals are very visible in the zoo and the concept is to understand how all animals, reptiles, and birds are important to Aussie life - and as you can imagine - some are really scary! One portion of the zoo has been dedicated to Steve's accomplishments in life, his trips abroad, and memorials to him since his tragic death two years ago. There was even a photo of him with a rattlesnake in Virginia!
When you arrive at the zoo you are immediately greeted by
park employees walking around with various animals. Some of which, like the Koalas, you can get very close to, others like the Dingos, are just for looks. We also saw a variety of lizards, snakes, mammals, and birds all on display. Like most zoos, you receive a schedule of shows and feedings and the challege is always to try to see and do it all.
Luckily for us, a Wed in Oct is not high season so the crowds were not what they often are. There were still lots of people there, but a comfortable number and we were able to see and do everything. The only disappointment was that we did not see Bindi, Robert or Terri Irwin wandering around the park as they are often known to do.
At the end of the day we opted to pay extra for a tour of the new wildlife hospital that was started by Steve Irwin's mother. The new facility was opened in mid Sept and is state of the art. It was such an interesting tour and amazing to see the compassion that the employees and volunteers have to save all creatures. At the hospital we saw loads of
koalas, birds, and a wallaby having surgery. He had a leg injury from a car accident and had had rod put into his leg. We observed from the other side of a glass wall the rod being removed. We also saw an trauma case (a poisonous brown snake that had been attacked by a dog). The dog had gone to the vet to get anti-venom and the hospital staff was trying to deteremine is the snake could be saved (the dog won). We saw two Koalas in the recovery room that were coming out of surgery.
The philosophy at the hospital is to never turn any animal away. They are open 24/7 for patients and will also send a team out to anywhere in Queenstown to rescue an injured animal. Most of the injuries come from cars hitting kangaroos, wombats, koalas, etc...
Many animals need to be rescued from constuction areas where trees are being cut down as well. The Queensland government works with WWW (Wildlife Warriors Worldwide) to try and relocate the animals before their habitats are cut down.
We stayed at the zoo until 4:30pm and then our tour of the animal hospital went until 6pm. This
meant we had a 3 hour plus drive to Byron Bay and an hour lost due to a time change. The good thing was we drove past the Gold Coast, known for all its amusement parks, after dark so the boys wouldn't be begging us to stop.
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