Australia Zoo-Day 32

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Today we set our alarms for 8 AM. The plan for the day was to go to the Australian Zoo. That is the zoo which Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin and his parents own. The zoo is located in Beerwah, about an hour an a half on the train dead north of here in the middle of the Sunshine Coast. We caught a train at the transit centre about 500 metres from the hostel. The ticket cost us each 12.60 with the return and a bus from the end of the line to the entrance of the zoo included. We reached the zoo at about 945 and were told that right away there was a very popular exhibition which used to be done by Steve Irwin himself. The performance took place in a small arena which was called the "Crocoseum." The Crocoseum holds 5000 people and every seat was filled. They started off displaying the elephants which they had and from there brought out the head bird handler with her signature birds. The one which caught my attention was a fair sized white bird which was able to swim like a penguin underwater except far faster and longer then a penguin. After that the handler brought out cockatoos and parrots. After that the crocodile section was supposed to happen. Smoke came out of a watery entrance with the handlers coming out first. As it turns out we were lucky that we went to the zoo on easter sunday because Terri Irwin, Steves wifes the main handler in the show. Also Steves highly publicized little daughter Bindi was in attendance. The crocodile was very large I will give it that but the show put on was nothing special at all. You see much better everyday on the Discovery Channel. After the exhibition was over we began exploring the zoo. We started off with camels, then koalas. The koalas were suprisingly very active eating and moving around, which I managed to capture on video. After the koalas there were the foxes, cassowaries and dingos. The cassowaries are kinda cool to see once. The best way to descrive them is a half sized ostrich combined with the colours of a peacock on its underbelly. They also have a large bone on the top of their head which is very akward looking. I had already seen one at the Sydney Wildlife World so I was not interested at all in viewing them. The foxes are nothing special, as we have them in Canada and the dingos would be cool to see but they were all at the back of their large pen and very lazy. After that the next exhibition was the tasmanian devils. We began looking for them and they all also seemed to be lazy and up to nothing, which was upsetting. after going through their indoor sleeping area we came to an outdoor pen they could also go to. As it turned out there was a three year old one which was making fast laps of the pen. This was awesome because I have always been interested in them, primarly because of the name but also because of their size and look. They were just as cool to watch run around. Unfortunatly that did not translate into good pictures as the little one never did feel like stopping the 15 to 20 minutes we were there. After the tasmanian devils the next area was the crocodile/ aligator area. They were either kept in single or double pens. They were all very lazy and very boring to watch. Because of Steve Irwin about 40% of the zoo was filled with these lazy corcodiles which was kind of a bummer. After sorting our way through the crocs etc. we made it to the land tortoises. There was two of them, both very large because they live around 150 years I am assuming very old. They were also a first time sighting and were very interesting to watch even though they operate very slowly. From there we went to the komodo dragon and water dragon/monitor exhibit. They were fairly interesting to see. The legend of the komodo made them interesting. There was only one and it was housed in a very small pen so it wasnt that great. the water monitors were interesting. The first one we saw was about two feet long, it turns out that was the largest. There were two or three which were about half the size and a good 20 to 30 very small ones which looked like they could have been born yesterday spread out everywhere. From there we went to the wombats and the venemous snakes area. I loved the wombats, they look like beavers without the tail and the big teeth. They were walking around eating grass or sleeping but I found them very interesting and entertaining. The snakes area was a bummer. I had seen lots of snakes at the Wildlife World in Sydney and it turns out that Wildlife World was way better then the Australian zoo. The maority of the snakes were hiding under logs or asleep in the back corners. There were interesting snakes I hadnt seen before like the inland taipan snake. The snake is nothing special visually but it has the most potent venom of any snake in the world. The other snake that I found cool was the green python. There was two of them in total and they were both very active climbing up and down branches. They area also a very nice green colour which I had never seen in a snake before.

After getting out of that section of the zoo, we went to the bird area. On the signs it said there would be approx 8 different varieties of parrots and other interesting birds. There might have been but the enclosed area was fairly well treed and the majority of the birds were not viewable. After going through that section we went to the best section in my opinion of the whole zoo. It was called the South Easy Asia section and contained three elephants and bengal tigers. First we saw the elephants at their eating station. This was very interesting because it showed off the dexterity that the elephant has with its trunk. It was also funny because as the elephants food supply decreased they began stealing the leaves from eachothers trunks. After they had finished eating we moved on to the tiger section. There was two trainers and three 8 month old bengal tigers. First they had the tigers playing on land walking up some tree trunks and playing with the trainers. After that one of the trainers started getting the bengals to make large jumps into the pool. the trainers would make movements which would entice the tigers to chase him and then he would jump into the pool and the tigers would go in after him.

After seeing the show we set off again. The next two sections were the koala and kangaroo sections. The kangaroo sections was a large park like area. The area was fenced in, we found a group of 5 which were just hanging out, lying around. Two were on their feet, two were on their sides and one was on its back. They were very cool, we just sat down and started petting them. They were not afraid at all and acted as if we wernt even there. After that section there was a koala section. It was about a fifth the size of the kangaroo area and was a buch of trees with the koalas lounging in the them. There was also a small sheltered area which had some koalas placed on little trees. It was basically set up so that people could get pictures with the koalas. We took advantage of that situation and got some good pictures.

After this we found a small echidna area. It was a fake rock building with small petting zoo like area with 3-5 echidnas in each. The echidnas were very cool, they were like a small beaver without the tail and front teeth. They also have spikes like a porcupine. I found them very cool and interesting to watch. Unfortunatly because they were inside a building they were very difficult to photograph.

Once finished that section we had seen all the animals at the zoo. We had about an hour left so we went back to the crocoseum and checked out the stores. I was looking for some postcards and mike was just window shopping. Because of this we got split up. We lost track of time and almost missed the bus. I moved pretty fast and made the bus. Mike didnt make it, i text his phone telling him to keep me informed. As it turned out there was a second bus and he made it to the train station ontime to make the train back to the hostel.

After getting back to the hostel around 7 oclock we were starvig and made some pasta for dinner. While we were eating the pasta we ran into our Irish friend Dave who told us he would be going to a bar later on beacause the top four English soccer teams were playing eachother. Because I was so deprived of sports I would normally watch backhome I could not wait to go and watch. Because of the time change the first game was on at 1130 PM and the second started at 2 oclock. We got changed so that we could get into the bars and headed out. We got to the bar that Dave told us he would be going go and it was packed. Wes watched the first half of the game with 30 other people from the street and because we couldnt find a seat we decided to leave and find another sports bar. We found another one we had been to before. The crowd there was very weird as was what they had on tv. They had about 12 tvs. 4ish had formula one, one had music videos going, a couple had bowling, 4-5 had track and field and one tv in the back had the game. I didnt care at all I just wanted to see some soccer. As it turns out it shut down at one oclock which was before the end of the first game. This night wasnt going anywhere. All the bars were shutting down even though they had plenty of customers. Normally they are open until atleast three and I am still not sure why they did shut down so early unless there was some law about holidays because it was easter sunday. After getting out of that place we were on our way home. We were walking through the george street mall when we found a cafe in the middle of the street mall showing the game. There was no sitting space but I was more then happy to find a place I would be able to just watch the game at this point. We watched the end of the first game with Manchester United beating Liverpool 3-0. After that there was about half an hour before the next game. All the fans who were just there for that game began clearing so I moved quickly to secure a table. We ended up getting one and watched a game from 1992 which was filler before the next game. Servers for the store said that everyone had to order a drink inorder to sit down and watch the game there. We avoided it for as long as we could but once she got to us we ended up standing up and walking away. The prices there were unreal with glasses of pop costing 5 dollars. We ended up just going back to the hostel and going to bed. Would have loved to watch the game but it was really late and i didnt feel like blowing that much money just to watch the game.

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