Tuesday - Australia zoo

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Today I had plans to visit the late great Steve Irwin's Australia zoo!

I was up early, had breakfast and took the free minibus down to the bus station along with a couple of guys who I was aware of from the welcome meetinG last night. When we arrived at the bus stop there were several other people waiting for the greyhound bus to take us to the zoo. It was pretty had to miss the bus really as it was yellow and had Australia zoo all over it lol. Even the seats had animal themed covers on them :-)

We stopped off along the way to pick other passengers up and got there about 9.40am. I traded in my voucher and wasn't given a ticket but was given a map and guide to the different feeding times and shows for the animals.

I visited the otters, giant tortoises, the fresh and salt water crocs, snakes including the most venue minus snake in the world, one drop of it's venom is enough to kill 100 men! birds of prey, giraffes, rhinos, tigers, wombats, koalas and kangaroos etc. I managed to catch feeding time shows for the tortoises, otters, tigers, and the big one in the Crocotorium! (Cool name by the way I reckon that was Steve's inspiration lol) Crikey!

The Crocoseum is basically a small stadium which has the Big Show in at 12 noon every day. This involves showing off birds of prey and paradise, snakes and of course crocs. A small one where one lucky member ( or unlucky depending on how you look at it lol) gets to help feed one of the smaller crocs. The big beast is saved for the finale! All I can say is the croc handlers are either brave or stupid lol.

I loved the tigers as I'm a huge fan of these wonderful creatures and bought an official photo of one of them, all the money goes into helping protect endangered tigers. I was thinking about may be getting a souvenir photo with one one the animals, but when I enquired about rhinos, leopards or tigers it was around $80 AUS so I had to give it a miss.

To get around a took a couple of rides on the free train they have which circulates the lark at regular intervals, it definitely helps to save the flip flop rubber lol. There is also a statute of Steve with his family and a plaque type thing with the handprints of his wife and family as a moving tribute.

I had a good day there and thought it was a great place. Very family orientated and mist of the animals have either been bred in captivity, recused from their natural habitat or brought in from other zoo's. Steve's memory is everywhere from the signs directing you around, to the wording used when talking about the animals to video clips of him int Crocoseum and all the staff talk about him with the warmth, affection and respect he so rightly deserves, I did get a bit emotional I must Admit.

The bus left about 3.50pm and we got back to Noosa around 5.15pm. The mini bus was waiting for us but had to wait until5.30pm for the next greyhiund bus to arrive. However after 20 minutes of waiting it hadn't arrived and it turned out it was running late so me and the driver headed backs the two boys had forged on ahead on foot and walked back up hill! I really couldn't be botherd as my feet were still hurting from my boarding lesson.

When I got back I chilled out had some dinner in the bar as I hadn't been food shopping. Whilst I was in the bar a group off local musician sparked up playing Irish orientsted music which was nice to hear and had my feet tapping. I then headed back to the dorm And chatted with my roomies. We were all chatting and got to discussing sun rises and sunsets. Ed had been on the sun set cruise the hostel advertised and also had gotten up early to watch the sun rise at devils cove which is in the Noosa national park near to town.

So we decided how long it would take to walk there, checked sunrise time and decided we had to get up at 0345!

Best get to be then lol!

Xxx

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