Australia Zoo

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We woke up at 07:30am on Saturday morning; feeling slightly worse for wear after our hardly excessive drinking the night before. We managed some breakfast and a coffee before heading up the road to the YHA - our pick up point for the bus. We’d booked the Australia Zoo trip with a company called “CC’s Croc Connections”. The bus arrived on schedule and we were greeted by the friendly driver. We made a couple of stops at other hostels and hotels in Brisbane before making our way to the zoo. The driver gave us a brief explanation of his working background - he’d worked with Steve and Terri Irwin at the zoo for a few years before deciding to work as a shuttle bus driver. He explained the ethos behind the zoo - what the Irwin’s stand for, what they want to achieve and a little bit about the roles that the two Irwin children have in keeping the conservation dream alive. We were given a fully comprehensive map and a cute circular yellow badge with “Crocs Rule” written on it. He played a DVD documentary about the life of Steve Irwin (and his family), giving background information into his childhood, his adult life, his dreams, ideas and passion for animals; especially reptiles! We were mildly excited to be going to the zoo when we got on the bus - when we arrived at the zoo, we were chomping at the bit to get in and start seeing the animals. As you approach the zoo on the Steven Irwin Highway, you can catch some glimpses of the Glasshouse Mountains in Beerwah.

We made our way through the entrance of the zoo and immediately stopped to look at and take pictures of the big bronze memorial statue of the Irwin family. We headed off toward the elephant feeding as the driver suggested - we stopped on the way to chat to a friendly zoo employee when was holding an alligator in her hands. She allowed us to touch and stroke the tail before stating that we were allowed to take pictures if we wanted. Me and Philipp took it in turns to take/have our picture taken whilst we stroked the alligator. It was the weirdest sensation. We had been told that the main idea behind the zoo was conservation and preservation. Steve Irwin believed that if you could touch and interact with an animal, you’d immediately fall in love with the species and automatically want to protect it - “Conservation through exciting education”. We were expecting to be able to “pet” some of the more cuddly animals but definitely didn’t expect to touch an alligator within twenty meters of the entrance! Still grinning from the alligator experience, we followed the path round to the elephant feeding. We assumed you’d have to pay to feed the elephants but the staff assured us we could feed them as many times as we wanted for free. We simply had to join a line, pick a couple of pieces of fruit & veg from the bucket and wait to be called forward. When it was our turn, we stepped forward on to a coloured mat and held the food out on the palm of our hand, arm outstretched. The elephant then picked up the offering with its trunk and ate it before searching your hand for another piece. The trunk of an elephant is a very strange thing! You could feel how powerful a muscle it was by the way it reached to your hand to grasp the food. It felt rough and hairy and left a trail of saliva on your hand. Very odd but not an unpleasant experience. The animals themselves were enormous. I don’t think I’ve seen elephants that big before! However, they were very gentle creatures and being able to feed them was an unexpected but enjoyable thing to do.

Again we followed the path, round to the “Crocoseum” to see the first Wildlife Warriors show of the day. The zoo was not particularly busy (perhaps because it was the week before the Easter school holidays) and we were able to get a great spot in the spectator stands. The staff came out on time and worked the audience, getting us to shout “crikey” as loud as we could - in competition with the visitors on the other side of the stands. There was a competition to win a free photo experience with your choice of animal - yours if you could do the best monkey impression in front of the stands! We were too embarrassed to entre, but regretted it afterwards as we’d have loved a souvenir photo with any of the animals at the zoo. The first animals in the Crocoseum were the snakes - the handlers came out with a variety of snakes from across Australia. The main attraction was the enormous Anaconda that one staff member carried out, wrapped around her! She walked, fully clothed, into the water and let the snake go for a swim. She followed behind it, keeping an eye. It seemed to take her longer than anticipated to catch it again and take it back out of the Crocoseum. Next came the free-flying birds - a diverse mixture of birds from across Australia. There were Cockatoos, Macaws, and a whole range of brightly coloured birds that flew around the stands; ducking and diving, calling out to each other, flying in formation and back and forth between the keepers. After the birds, came the main star of the show - the exhibition of “Digger”, the salt water crocodile.

Digger had two keepers with him - both fairly big Aussie blokes who I’ll call Keeper One and Keeper Two. Keeper One spoke to the crowd; giving facts about how Digger was caught, why, and where whilst the Keeper Two stopped Digger eating Keeper One. We were given some interesting facts about Diggers size and body weight, his personality and the life he has in the zoo. Keeper One demonstrated Diggers ability to lunge forward by tempting him with a juicy piece of raw steak. Keeper Two would draw Diggers attention away from Keeper One, to enable Keeper One to move around the Crocoseum. Digger is particularly fast in water and fairly slow on land due to his “stubby little legs and fat belly”. Their words, not mine! However, they did state that just because you were on land, it didn’t mean that you were safe. Digger is able to lunge out of the water and up on to the shore at a distance of almost half his body length - that’s over eight feet! Keeper One made his way to the far side of the Crocoseum, to a platform that overhung the pool in the enclosure. Digger then made his way through the water, stopping underneath the platform; waiting in anticipation! Keeper One informed us that crocodiles are able to propel themselves out of the water, using their massive tail, to get to a good height above the water level, enabling them to pluck birds from low lying branches. To demonstrate this, he held out a big chunk of tasty steak for Digger, around 2.5 - 3 meters above the water surface. After a little encouragement, Digger propelled himself out of the water (from his stationary position) and was able to reach the food with an almighty snap of his jaws. The crowd could only watch, mesmerised by the sheer power of this huge and not particularly attractive animal! The show ended all too quickly - the crowd made their way out of the Crocoseum whilst Digger was still inside. Each time someone got too close to the fence, a staff member would ask them to move away from the fence.

From here, we made our way round to see the other Salt Water crocodiles - including one called Agro (short for aggressive)! He is over sixteen feet long - the biggest croc in the whole zoo. We thought Digger was big, but Agro was even bigger. Agro took two years for Steve Irwin to catch and even then it wasn’t easy. When he finally got Agro in the trap, he broke the mangrove branch that supported the trap and rolled down the bank, landing on the boat - destroying it! It seems that Agro never got over being caught and has since attacked anything that went into his enclosure - including four lawn movers! The rest of the crocs were either snoozing in the sun or almost totally submerged in their enclosure. We followed the path round to see the other Australian animals including the Tazmanian Devils, Dingos, a Cassowary, and Koalas. We stopped off to for a quick bit of lunch (pizza and chips!) before heading off to see the kangaroo and wallaby haven. We made our through the parkland, stopping to take pictures of the kangaroos as they relaxed in the afternoon sunshine. There was the opportunity to purchase food to give to the kangaroos but we decided that given the amount of visitors the zoo has, they probably wouldn’t be hungry! The kangaroos were fairly tame and Philipp was able to stroke one that was lying in a patch of sun. I didn’t attempt to stroke it as it was recovering from the experience of having food thrust up its nose by a small child. It looked decidedly annoyed and I chose not to risk losing my arm to it. We reached the end of the kangaroo enclosure and made our way round to the tiger enclosure via the birds of prey aviary, the reptile house and the wombat enclosure. The Sumatran tigers were magnificent - there was one keeper inside the enclosure with the two tigers. He had some sort of toy on the end of a long metal pole and the tiger was enjoying trying to catch it. It looked rather like a huge domestic cat - playful, with a kitten like enthusiasm for the toy! From here we made our way back past the elephant enclosure - stopping again to feed them!

Our time at the zoo had almost run out - we made our way back through the zoo, going past some of the enclosures we had seen earlier in the day. We had a really enjoyable day in the zoo - the idea of “conservation through exciting education” had been fully implemented. There were opportunities to interact with the animals at every corner and the staff were very knowledgeable; whenever they were asked a questions they had the answer. The passion and enthusiasm for animals is obvious from the moment you walk in to the zoo. We both found it a really great experience and were glad we’d been able to go.

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