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Published: January 18th 2007
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The Road Trip began the day after Boxing day in Sydney. (That's the 27th December Bish)
Myself, Daz, Shaz, Mum, Dad, Anna and Benjy all piled into a Kia People Carrier and headed up the East Coast.
The aim was to reach Australia Zoo which is of course famous for being Steve Irwins Zoo (RIP Steve, we luv ya but you have got the most annoying daughter in the whole wide world). It is located in Beerwah which is a couple of hours north of Brisbane.
After liasing with a few local Aussies in Sydney they couldn't believe that we were planning to reach the Zoo in a day. Well we set out to prove them wrong,.................we didn't!! It took us 3 hours to get out of Sydney but we felt that a 12 hour stint of non-stop driving was a fair effort.
It was about 10pm and time to find a place to kip for the night. I can't even remember the name of the place as it's so remote, it makes Holywell look like New York. A few failed attempts of enquiring at dodgy local Motels we came accross a Caravan Park. Obviously we didn't have
First Nights Digs
Pose for the brochure Daz a Caravan in tow but took a chance they'd have something for us. 'Bingo' After 15 minutes of me and me old man trying to persuade the owner that allowing 7 adults to sleep in a 6 berth mobile home was not against park rules we pulled up at our home for the night.
Even though we'd been driving all day a few of the crew still had enough energy left to go and locate food and beer supplies for the evening. After what felt like an eternity, Dad, Shaz and me sis returned with a few family sized Pizzas but no Beer; Gutted but Nescafe would have to suffice.
Not even the guts of the Jest and the Daz could finish all the Pizzas, but was a good job as they served the purpose of Breakfast on the road about 8 hours later.
We drove for a further 5 hours passing Brisbane and finally arriving at 'Bindi's Zoo' as it now seems to be known as. Bindi is Steve Irwins daughter and you can't be in Australia with more than 5 minutes passing without her appearing on TV, Billboards or Posters. "Your eight years old
Bindi Irwin
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, HOW DID U GET ON MY BLOG, GET OUT OF MY LIFE!!!!!!!!! luv, go and play with ur Barbie and save the excercise DVDs till your old enough"!!!!.................. Enough about her, it just winds me up!!
First impressions of the Zoo were 'CRIKEY', mainly because Steve is plastered everwhere, but rightly so as the man was a legend and his Zoo lived up to expectations although gutted the great man himself wasn't there to juggle with the Crocs.
We did however still have a live show within the 'Crocosium'. (a stadium where seating was provided to watch the live shows)
This consisted of shows containing Elephants, Birds, Snakes and Crocs.
We thought we'd missed the damn thing to begin with though. When we first arrived in the Zoo we took note of what time live shows started and where they where guna be. All sorted then, we'd spend the first couple of hours visiting the large array of Animals and Reptiles at our disposal and then settle down in the 'Crocosium' about half hour before the show was scheduled to start so we could get decent seats.
The show was advertised to start @1430 and due to last an hour. This was perfect as we could still fit in a
Komodo Dragon
Steve Irwins Zoo visit to the Tiger Show before the Zoo shut @ 1630.
So there we were, all eagerly waiting for Steves apprentices to do there thing and give us some "ooohs" and "ahhhhs".
1430 passed and there were us 7 alone in a 10,000 seater stadium. 1455 passed, still alone, "WHAT"S GOING ON" the highlight of the Zoo and the last show of the day and we were beginning to think we'd missed it. Not happy about the situation and the printing of '1430' in the days programme i headed towards the 'information' desk to kick some ass!!!
"err excuse me luv, we've been sitting in the Crocosium waiting for the show to start and nothing seems to be happening. what's going on?????" "oh hang on sir, (clicks on computer screen to get the time displayed) the show starts at in half an hour" (thinking that they had ballsed everything up and we're now guna miss the Tigers) "so why did you advertise the show starting at 1430?????????" "Sir, it's only 1400" (eh????????????????????????????????) ...............................................................................................................................................................................................(hang on)....................................................................(Sh%t).......................... Starting to glow a shade of vibrant Red right now as we'd all forgotten (including Shaz that lives in the damn country) that as soon
Tasmanian Devil
Steve Irwins Zoo as u travel from New South Wales and into Queensland the clocks go back an hour. How embarrasing.. "oh i'm really sorry luv, just travelled from Sydney" (back away,back away, smile sweetly and head for the door).
We can all laugh about it now but no need for so much stress on a year off work!!!!!!! ;-)
It was well worth the wait though;
The sound of the Crocs Jaw snapping as it reaches for the dangling meat will put me off one of Sandiles morning walks ever again!!
Zoo complete and now time to locate a decent feed, a vast amount of beer and a bed to kip in.
Heading back the way we came from we headed for a seaside town. That was the plan all along; to shoot up to the Zoo ASAP and then spend the rest of the road trip lesuirely making our way down the coast back to Sydney.
We arrived in 'Surfers Paradise territory' early evening and trying to find accomodation for 7 was a needle in a haystack situation. It is of course the Xmas holidays and it's summer so all Aussies flock
Crocosium
My parents were arrived early to make sure they got a good seat!!!!!!! to the coast and have probably been booked in for months. After ages of searching we swallowed our pride and introduced the Jests to Hostel lifestyle, this Hostel however was thankfully one of the nicest we've seen in Oz and all were content with a double room.
Of course we didn't do the usual thing of fighting for a spare hob to boil your Pasta in the shared kitchen as we were dining out for the evening.
The town was called Coolangatta and was gorgeous, the food was just as good but didn't quite out-do the Lager as that tastes good all round the world.
A good laugh at the dinner table and then back to the hostel for some rest, well not entirely true. After all of us being sent to our rooms as we were being to noisy around the Pool Table, myself, Daz and Benjy decided to indulge in a few games of Cards and a few more tipples before we turned in for the night. Yes, we sat up until the early hours and we apologise to Shaz for choosing mine, daz and sahazza's room for the venue for the after party :-)
Tribute to Steve Irwin
Deserves a Graham Torrington moment me thinks No 'lie in' later and three sore heads we were back in the Kia. It was all to much of a familiar feeling of the 'BAZ BUS' days but my sis was driving so no problems there........................err, also not entirely true, sorry Anna but we stacked it!!!!
To be fair there was a bit of a pile up ahead of us that we failed to spot till the last minute and........"BANG".... we were imbedded in the back of someones Toyota.
These Kias are like a Tank tho', his back end was mangled but all we had was a twisted number plate.
Still, nobody hurt and after an hour we were back on our way.
Next stop for the evening was Kempsey. Never heard of it??? No, neither has anyone that lives in Australia. It's a really backward place and all the locals were born and bred there and spend there vacations at their neighbours house!! The Hotel owner was telling us that Queensland was the best state in Australia because the Petrols cheap!! No mention of the white sandy beaches, crystal blue waters and of course a small matter of the Barrier reef, Oh no, it's all
Koala
Steve Irwins Zoo about the price of Petrol!!!
It does contain a puka Chinese restaurant tho' so all is forgiven.
Back on the road the next morning but this time we returned to Sydney as we were so near and not worth trying to find accomodation when we all had a place to stay anyway.
So a big thanks to the Jests for a wkd few days and a big 'sort it out' to Bindi.
One night back at our ranch in Randwick and then we awoke to New Years Eve, let the games begin................
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Megan
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Even using safice jesty..............impressed!!!!!!!!