Blogs from Australia Zoo, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

It transpires that one of the girls in my room got the wrong day for her trip to Fraser Island. She woke up (the dorm) at 5.30am and was a day too early for her trip, so is now going to Australia Zoo for the day. So is Anna, another girl in my dorm. And so am I - although I'm the only one with the car, I'm driving one way and then onwards to Brisbane, so the girls will be getting the coach. Still it will be nice to have company on the way round the zoo. I'm really excited to go - last time, it was cagoule weather (and I didn't own one). Today is glorious sunshine - can't wait to see what the zoo looks like when you're not having to scuttle around ... read more

Photos speak louder than words at Australia Zoo, home to the celebrity cult of the Irwin family, and numerous wild animals. Father Steve (deceased 2006), aka Crocodile Hunter, built up the zoo he took over from his father. His apparently maniacal widow, Terri, holds the reins now, and it's 'one helluva ride', with son and daughter in tow. The Zoo provides an exciting and educational day out for families and cynics alike, "crikey". We saw koalas, which had evaded us on our antipodean adventure so far, Tasmanian devils, which had remained hidden. Plus a whole host of other creatures with which we now had a greater level of familarity: enormous saltwater crocodiles, plus freshwater cousins; kangaroos that we could feed; wallabies; imported komodo dragons and alligators and hundreds of birds whose names we cannot entirely recall. ... read more

This morning Matt got up at o'dark-thirty with Rowelly. He was letting us borrow his car for the day to go to Australia Zoo, which meant that Matt had to drive him to work. Better him than me. Rowelly has an SUV and the roads here are narrower than the States. Combine that with driving on the wrong side of the road and that would just be a recipe for disaster if I got behind the wheel. I've driven on the left before but it's always been a compact rental car...not a huge, nice SUV that belonged to someone I knew. Matt came back from dropping off Rowelly and I got up and got dressed and ready. We went to breakfast with Rowelly's brother, Keith. We had actually met Keith before this trip...he had come to ... read more

Morgens wanderten mir auf den 235m hohen Mt. Beerbuurum. Der Weg war steiler als erwartet. Als Belohnung hatten wir jedoch einen herrlichen Rundumblick über die Glasshouse Mountains. Diese wurden von James Cook so benannt. Anschließend suchten wir ein Info-Center auf, wo wir uns kurzerhand dazu entschlossen, einen Tag im riesigen Australia Zoo zu verbringen. Vorher mussten wir jedoch noch das Nötigste an Essen und Trinken aufnehmen. Nirgends geht das besser, als bei ALDI!!! Gerade noch rechtzeitig angekommen, konnten wir die Tiershow im Crocoseum bestaunen. In einer Arena mit ca. 5.000 Sitzplätzen, wurden hier riesige Schlangen, Papageien, Geier und Elefanten gezeigt. Der absolute Höhepunkt war die Fütterung eines Krokodils. Im schön angelegten Zoo lebten außerdem noch die bekannten einheimischen Tiere wie Koala, Kängeruh, Alligatoren, Wombat, giftige Schlangen etc. Der Zoo wur... read more

Matt here again. Well, I just spent over half an hour writing this blog for it to all have disappeared, so time to start it again! Everybody was looking forward to today, being a family of animal lovers where better to spend the day than Australia Zoo?! Staying in a motel just a few minutes from the park entrance an early start was definitely not in our plans! We got to the park around 10ish, but due to the fact it was a weekday and everyone was back at school it was luckily quite empty. Once we had paid and gone through the gates, we were free to roam the park, although our attention quickly turned away from the animals for a few minutes as a group of extremely small Australian school children wearing matching hats ... read more

Not long left now in Oz, can't believe how fast it has gone - got so much to tell you.... On our way down the coast we had been hearing little snippets about an amazing beach town called Noosa. The surf at Noosa's beaches are meant to be brilliant ranging from beginner breaks to amazing high waves for the advanced. I found a great deal on the YHA website for their hostel if you bought tickets to the zoo it meant we had discounted accommadation. Which is good because YHA hostels are good they are expensive. We booked for 5 nights to have a bit of a chill out after all of our adventures. The YHA building was called Halse Lodge and is the oldest building in the area, 100 years old. While we were there ... read more