Crikey, Australia Zoo!!

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We woke with fuzzy heads this morning from a few drinks celebrating Wills birthday the night before. We packed a bag with some snacks for the day and grabbed a rushed free breakfast before catching the shuttle bus to Main Beach where we then caught the Australia Zoo coach to the zoo.

We took a walk around the crocs first, spotting all the famous names that we had seen on TV like Aggro and Casper. There were a few brave Herons in the croc enclosures who didn't seem to be worried about swimming and wandering around the crocs - I'm not sure I'd be that brave.

We also saw dingoes at the zoo but they looked much better fed than those we had been camping with on Fraser!

The weirdest animal that we saw was the Cassowary, who looked almost prehistoric with the hard hump on top of his head and brightly coloured neck.

Around mid-day we made our way to the Crocosseum and took a seat to watch the famous Australia Zoo show. It wasn't the same without any of the Irwins involved but it was still an entertaining show with several types of colourful birds flying around the arena at one time and watching the croc keepers manoeuvring the adult croc around the arena. The definite low light for Jo was when they walked up the aisles with snakes as Jo was sat at the end of the aisle, nearest the snakes.

We learnt a few things at the Zoo:

• Koalas don't drink - they get the moisture out of the Eucalyptus leaves instead
• Koalas make a pig like grunting noise when they are showing their dominance/ trying to attract a mate - we witnessed one of the male koalas making this noise when marking his territory during the koala talk
• Camels regurgitate their food from their stomach and then chew and digest it - we watched a couple of camels bringing the food back up their long necks and filling their cheeks with good that they would then chew up and swallow again.
• Red Pandas have an extra thumb (6 fingers) to help
• Tasmanian Devils are endangered - but not due to humans this time. They are endangered due to Tasmanian Facial Tumour Disease






The highlight of the day was one of the last shows that we saw, which was the Tiger show. There was one host and one zoo keeper who were both in the enclosure. The zoo keeper was keeping the Tiger entertained and trying to get him to play whilst the host was explaining the Tiger's behaviour. The host had a range of toys which could be described as giant sized cat toys which he would tease the Tiger with to get him to chase and play. At one point he threw the toy up in the air to get the Tiger to climb the tree and the Tiger climbed about 6 feet in less than a second without any problem. He also got the Tiger reluctantly to swim in the pool in the enclosure by jumping into the pool himself with the toy in his hand. They also showed how they used milk as a reward and as tactic to be able to perform health checks on the Tiger.

Towards the end of the day Jo got to feed Sabu, the Asian elephant but ended up withs hand covered in Elephant slobber. We then made our way back through the Avery where we saw a Kookaburra with a broken wing perched on what looked like a kookaburra loo - take a look at the photo. The last show of the day was the Asian otter which turned out to be one of the most entertaining with the otters keen for food and making an array of noises and fighting amongst themselves to be the first to catch their shellfish dinner. As we were leaving to catch the bus back to Noosa we saw one of the zoo keepers taking a wombat for a walk do headed over for a photo opportunity.

Back in Noosa we caught the shuttle bus up to Noosa Junction where we picked up dinner of roast chicken chips and salad and then walked back to the hostel to eat.

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