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Published: July 24th 2011
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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 and uniforms came through, bless!
Our eyes quickly turned back to the animals as the first area we came to held a huge Komodo Dragon, the thing was massive! We wandered around the native lizards/birds and tasmanian devils for a while, although my favourite part was the rather large spider on the roof, albeit not part of the zoo.. Then we found our way
to the aligators and the crocs, of which a majority were caught by the one and only Steve Irwin, which was very interesting. The day suddenly got more exciting as we spotted the Kangaroo Park, which allows people to wander round a huge open space with the Kangaroo's. We purchased a $2 bag of food and quickly found a Kangaroo on it's own. Swiftly walking towards it to make sure nobody else got there first, we held out our hands with the food to see if it would eat any, practically forcing the food into the poor buggers mouth haha. Luckily it took pity on us and made our day by eating our food, it was amazing.
Leaving the Kangaroo park we wandered the rest of the zoo, making sure no animals were left unseen! The animals we saw included Dingo's, emus, cassowaries, elephants, camels, tigers, red pandas, wombats, snakes etc. The snake area had a selection of windows around the outside, each containing a different snake from Australia with a description below the glass. It was a little worrying passing empty cages, prompting a quick check on the surrounding floor.. On the end was a very interesting snake,
the Taipan. Also known as the Fierce snake, it is the most dangerous in the world, having enough vemon to kill 100 men with just one bite. Even more worrying was the realisation that the glass was slightly open, seeing the snake slither through it and onto the floor. The room erupted with screams and everyone shot out... Only joking!
Incase anyone was wondering, we saw many Koalas! Similar to the Kangaroo Park, you could walk through the Koala's as well. You could even touch some of the ones low down in the tree's, which of course we jumped at the chance to do and took turns touching the soft, fluffy fur. Later in the day Mum and Sophie decided they wanted to have a picture holiding a Koala. So we paid the photographer and they both got lovely photo's. Unfortunately the Koala didn't poo on either of them, that would have been an even better photo! We had now done everything to do in the zoo, so after a few purchases in the gift shop we made our way to the exit.
After the zoo, we had nothing to do but go straight to the Airport. Our
flight was scheduled to be quite soon anyway, so it made sense. We arrived at the Airport in plenty of time, but in typical Jetstar fashion our plane was delayed almost 2 hours. Although I wasn't overly bothered, as it gave me more time for some pre-flight beers. We eventually boarded around 11pm, and was told we could all have upgrades! Being the first time this had ever happened to us, we were ecstatic!......... Turned out they had put us next to the emergency exits and we had the added responsibility of ensuring the doors opened in the case of an emergency. Basically, giving any problem with the plane, everyones life rested in our hands. Some upgrade that was! Luckily for us, we arrived without having to save everyones life. Even though it was getting onto 1.30am at this point, the most exciting part of the day was yet to come. We were stood waiting for our bags, when all of a sudden Sophies bag comes out first! It was unbelievable. No waiting around for 30 minutes while we wait for just one bag to come through, we were actually first! Anyway, we then made our hour long journy from
the Airport to the hotel. The road was incredible, with a constant moonlit ocean view on our right, and the tree's and wildlife on our left. We had to drive carefully however, as we saw a wild Kangaroo just by the side of the road, then nearly ran over a huge wild boar further down! Getting onto around 3am now, we finally made it to the hotel, which is one of the best places we've ever been. It's not huge, but the rooms are what I expect in Simon Cowell's house, nevermind in a small hotel in Queensland. The saltwater pool looked amazing in the dark with the surrounding palm tree's. We would loved to have looked around, but it was so late and we needed sleep, so retiring to our beds seemed the best possible option.
A very long and tiring day, but one that we will definitely remember forever.
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Jess
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Great post Matt-very funny. Sounds amazing-wish I was there! Love to you all xxx