Wombat on a leash!

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G'day folks!

Here's what we've been up to recently.

We finally got round to visiting Australia Zoo, the one owned by the Irwin family. We've been to loads of zoos and wildlife parks since we've been here, so a lot of things we'd seen before obviously, but one good thing about this place is that the animals all have really nice surroundings and loads of space.

I finally hugged a koala and got my photo taken with it! He was a cute little fella, but you can tell in my face that I was very worried he was going to wee on me!! But luckily he didn't! Another 'first' we experienced at the zoo was seeing a wombat being walked on a leash, like a dog (see pic)!! So bizarre. We went up to the zoo-keepers walking him to find out more and apparently he'd had a 'rough week'. What the?! What's he got to worry about hey, interest rates, money?! Strange.

Speaking of animals, Ben saw a snake - a python (we think?) in a tree, just a 5 min walk from where we are staying! I wasn't with him at the time, so I didn't see it myself, but that's probably a good thing, as I would have freaked out a bit!! We've been quite lucky in terms of not seeing too many big spiders and snakes, but now the weather is really hotting up, paranoia is kicking in again and every shower or toilet gets a good going over!!

This weekend just gone, we booked ourselves on a day tour to Moreton Island, which is the 3rd largest sand island in the world apparently, and only about an hour from Brisbane.

We went on a guided tour and there were 8 other people in our group - all couples funnily enough! They were all really nice people and a mixture of English, German and Korean. We all got in the 4 wheel drive and were driven by the guide to the port of brisbane, and then onto a three storey ferry. On the way over we saw A LOT of big blue jellyfish, which made us a bit anxious as we were going snorkelling as soon as we reached the island!

When we got there, the island was so picturesque - gorgeous beaches and nice blue sea! There are a series of shipwrecks, which are good for snorkelling near where the ferry arrives, so we got into small groups and the guide took us snorkelling and we fed the fish that were all around our legs!

After that, we got back into the 4WD for a nice bumpy ride across the island, over to an area called 'The Desert' which, as you can guess from the name, is just literally sand and heat and nothing else! There was a pretty steep sand dune, which we all went sand-boarding on.

It was really good fun - there were 4 different types of board and you can go down on your front, sitting down, or standing up like a pro. The downside was the walk back up though! Walking up a very steep hill, entirely made of sand, in stifling heat and carry the board was bloody hard work.

So after that, we got back into the car and went to the Blue Lagoon which was SO what we needed after getting so hot and sticky sand-boarding. The lagoon is a freshwater lake and the water was suprisngly clear! It was much bigger than we expected too, so we had plenty of room to swim about. We didn't want to get out and get back into the hot car, but we had to get back for the return ferry.

It was a really good day, and we're even more excited about going to Fraser Island now, which is the biggest sand island in the world and basically like Moreton Island but much bigger.

It's been around 30c or so for the last couple of weeks. The sun keeps knocking us out!

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Comments

[SIMON]

CHECK'D SHIRT.
Bob. It's good to see that you're trying to blend in with the locals. Living in a trailer was a good start, however, if you're gonna dress like them, aren';t you supposed to remove the sleves from that shirt? Si.