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Published: August 22nd 2006
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Have a go at this one!
By Jingo that looks like a Dingo! Welcome to part two of our megablog! We thought we'd try and be clever and save time by writing two parts at the same time!
So on our first full day in Brisbane we were going to go to Australia Zoo. We woke up fairly early, checked out and got on the bus at about 8.30 and drove around to pick up all the rest of the people. When everyone had been collected we got a pretty cool surprise. It turned out that our coach driver actually used to work in Australia Zoo and knew the Irwen's quite well and still kept in touch with them and met up with them occasionally. During our journey to the zoo we were regailed with stories about Steve, Terri and Bindi, and shown photos and dvd's, which made a nice change from just being driven around with nothing to do but listen to the dodgy 80's music on the radio that they seem to favour in Australia. We arrived at the zoo at about 10am and went straight to the information desk to book our 'Animal Encounters'. They do several of these special tours for very small groups of people, where you get
Ali feeding a roo
Isn't she gorgeous!!! kangaroos not bad either up close and personal with various animals. We chose to visit the animal hospital, and do the Dingo experience. After that we went and got some breakfast of ridiculously oversized (and overpriced) pancakes, which we both failed to finish, and then it was off to the Crocoseum to watch the live animal shows. First of all there was a snake show, which was pretty good and they try to keep it light hearted and also give you some info about what to do if you get bitten (yikes!). Then there was the tiger show which was amazing. The tigers were absolutely beautiful and really clever, they really were just like big cats, climbing up poles and jumping around, it was very cool. Then there was a live bird show, which was pretty interesting but quite hard to see as the birds were constantly flying around, but they did have a Wedge Tailed Eagle, which is Australia's native eagle and is HUGE! That was really good and informative. Last but not least was the Crocodile show, unfortunately Steve wasn't there to do it, but it was really good anyway. They were feeding the crocs to get them out of the water
Crikey
Danger, Danger , Danger
and making them use their tales to 'jump' really far up to grab a chicken. That was really good, because you could tell that the keepers had to have enormous respect for them because they're so powerful and pretty unpredictable.
After all the shows, we went and had a quick wander around and bought some Roo food. We went into Roo heaven, where there are kangaroos and wallabies jumping around all over the place, which we then were able to hand feed. They were really lovely and so soft, but obviously losing interest in the roo food, as it was pretty difficult for us to find a roo that actually wanted anything to eat. It was highly entertaining though.
After that we wandered through to the red kangaroo heaven (and still couldn't find a Roo that wanted our food!) and then through to the rainforest aviary, which had some absolutley beautiful parrots and other birds, even the ducks were cool!
We then had to rush back to the information centre to meet the rest of our group to go on the hospital tour. We got on a little bus that took us over the other side of
Big ol' snake
one of these could eat the other one whole, which one, you decide! the carpark to the animal hospital. The hospital isn't actually owned by the zoo, but the Irwen's donated their land and A$1 million to get it going, so they treat their animals in return. The zoo is free of charge for anyone to bring any sick or injured native australian animals into. It was really nice to see all the animals that could be saved in there, so many koalas were in there that had been knocked over by cars or mauled by dogs. Unfortunately there was a koala on the table that had just died because it had been attacked by a dog. It was really interesting though and nice to know that the fee we paid to do the visit was going back to help the hospital.
When we got back from the hospital it was straight off to our Dingo encounter. There were only four of us in total, and we were taken to a smallish enclosure where we sat on the grass and the two dingo's came up to us in turn and licked our faces and we could pet them. They were absolutely gorgeous and we had some cool photos taken with them, Stew
feeding the roo's
cute little roo's was absolutely beside himself because 'they're like doggies!' (At this point I would like to add that any stories told about me getting excited and jumping up and down like a little kid cos of the dingos is purely a figment of Ali's imagination and I am far to manly and macho to ever act in such a manner, thank you, Stew.)
Unfortunately we then had to leave (after a quick dash around the gift shop of course, just enough time to buy a talking Steve Irwen doll, a shot glass, some wristbands and a stubby holder), but we got another dvd on the way home and also a trip through the glasshouse mountains which were lovely and had another cool Aboriginal story to go with them! We were dropped off at the coach station and had just enough time to grab some dinner before we got on the coach to Toowoomba to go to Stew's Auntie and Uncles.
We arrived in Toowoomba at about 8.30pm and were driven back to their house which was basically in the middle of nowhere. We had a light dinner and then went to bed as we were pretty shatterred. We woke up the next morning to be told that we were going to have a BBQ breakfast, wich was delicious and was also when we spotted the second wild lizard of our trip who turrned out to be about half a metre long and we believe is officially classified as a bearded scary lizard thingy!
The next couple of days they took us to the local sights including a Gourde craft centre, and various other crafty places, and down the Great Dividing Range and back up again, as we wouldn't have gotten the chance to see this on our coach because we were always travelling in the dark. We also went to see Stew's cousin and his wife and their new baby (sorry Jill but we don't have any new pictures of Isaac, we were being as slack with this as with writing the blogs). At some point during the 2 days we spent there, a strange little creature that appeared to be a cross between a mouse and a dog was more or less adopted by Mike and Lynne as her owner was away driving a truck a lot of the time.
Toowoomba was a really lovely place and we wished that we had had more time to spend there catching up with the Brew's and also making new friends and aquaintances like the local pub landlord, who we met a couple of times! We were sad to leave so soon but were also sad to be getting onto a coach that we would still be sitting on nearly 18 hours later! This sadness was balanced somewhat with the thought of what was to come in Sydney!
For anyone who reads this blog as soon as we post it we will be taking a couple hours break from blog writing and will be back after exploring Auckland to tell you all about Sydney and what we've found out.
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