CRIKEY we went to Australia Zoo

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Day 267 (19/12/07)

One of the main things we wanted to do on the East Coast was make a visit to Australia Zoo, the life's work of Steve Irwin, and today was the day. The zoo is about 70km north of Brisbane and we set off with an almost full Nora as we were joined by Spencer, Kayleigh, Fiona and Steph and would meet Liam and Gary when we arrived as they'd already booked on a tour. Suprisingly after the previous night's festivities we were all feeling pretty good and looking forward to our day out.

As we drove down Steve Irwin Way to be greeted by huge signs of Steve you couldn't help but feel a pang about what had happened to this man with the huge character. We arrived just in time for the twice daily main show at the cheesily named Crocoseum. This fantastic spectacle was to set the scene for an amazing day at the zoo. Steve Irwin was passionate about animal conservation and his family are continuing his work - the message comes through loud and clear in everything you see and do in Australia Zoo.

The show involved a snake section, an incredible bird display where birds flew around the huge 4000 seat arena and landed amongst the audience and of course a crocodile. Monty was brought into the arena and the highly enthusiastic zoo staff demonstrated the ways in which crocodiles hunt and linked it to crocodile safety, an important issue here in Australia. The whole aim of the zoo is to get people up close and personal with animals to make them care about their future and learn about animal conservation and this was a great start. Despite the show being a little cheesy it was enormous fun and had us excited about touring the rest of the zoo.

We had a great time wandering around the zoo looking at all the animals, impressed with the style of the enclosures they are kept in. Highlights included feeding goats, elephants and kangaroos, a koala show where we were able to pat these gorgeous cuddly creatures and learn more about them, seeing lots of scary but sleepy crocs and a tiger show where we watched three 5 month old cubs playing and learning to swim - adorable! It was also amazing and touching to see the amount of tributes still being left to Steve and his family a year after his death.

By the time we had to leave due to closing time (it was the only way they could get rid of us) we were all hooked and if they'd offered us jobs we'd have bitten their hands off!

Back in Brisbane we made a huge pot of chilli for everyone to share and watched a couple of movies before heading off to bed with plans of meeting up again with Fanny's Crew in Sydney over Xmas and New Year.

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