Australia Zoo
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009Today saw us get the free bus to Australia Zoo, the late Steve Irwin’s zoo in Queensland. It is around an hour coach ride from Noosa, and it is absolutely awesome. After my day there, I am now officially afraid of nothing.
The first part of the day went pretty fast. I got it over and done with and visited the snake section. For those of you who don’t know, I couldn’t even look at a photograph of a snake (or even a long worm on bad days) around seven months ago. I saw my first ever live snake in Thailand around 7 months ago in a snake farm and since then I’ve been much better, able to see them on T.V. without flinching and of course saving Lauren from kicking an Eastern Brown Snake (2nd most deadly in the world, folks!) the other day.
That over and done with, and we headed to the ‘Roo Heaven’ Kangaroo enclosure. We got to pat ‘roos and wallabes (sp!) to our hearts content, great fun. After that we headed over to the Crocoseum (which I ‘hillariously’ pronounced as croCAREseum for the entire day,) for an animal show. Hmm…
The show was aimed at the kiddies in the audience, and they did seem to love it, not so much the adults though. The first agonizingly awkward 39 minutes consisted of the heavily-franchised daughter of Steve Irwin, Bindi Irwin, performing songs with her ‘Crocmen’ from her forthcoming DVD. There were many highlights of this 39 minute extravaganza, most notably the song about the tiger which had an unnerving feeling of pedophile references. Lyrics along the lines of ‘He’ll lure you in/ with his enigmatic smile/ but don’t be fooled children/ get away while you can’ did little to help the image of the show. Here’s a picture of Lauren laughing so hard she’s crying:
The Crocmen seemed particularly half-arsed and badly rehearsed, sloppy dance moves abound. I’m not sure either, but Bindi didn’t seem to happy to be there either. Still, the kids in the audience loved it.
Then came the actual animal ‘show.’ Snakes were brought out and some descriptions were given and also the strong theme of wildlife protection was highlighted here. Then the bird section. Various birds flying in and out of the arena. To be honest, it wasn’t really all that, and we left halfway through the bird-bit. Again though, I’d like to stress that it was clearly aimed at the little ‘uns and they seemed to be having a hoot.
This brings me on to another point, the staff at the zoo were awesome. Very approachable, and regularly carrying some animal or other and happy to talk to you about them, they were a real asset to the zoo.
After lunch came a fairly momentous event in my life. I held a 3 meter long reticulated python. Oh? didn’t quite get that? The guy who couldn’t even look at them on T.V. until under a year ago held one of the brutes? Wait a sec, I’ll get some proof…
Uhu, so that was really quite something for me. My hand didn’t stop shaking for around half an hour afterward and I can’t stop thinking about how the beast felt like pure muscle under my fingers, but I did it. What’s more, the snakehandler was really awesome, I obviously told him about my fears and he was really calm and relaxed and discussed a brief history of the snake with me before letting me gently pat it. It was awesome. I’m pretty much immune to fear now.
Lauren also had a go at patting a snake on one of the roving staff members, although it was a little smaller than my one.
Again the staff lady here was very friendly, making the experience informative and relaxed.
After my big adventure holding a snake, Lauren wanted to have a go at something slightly less adventurous but still just as great. She wanted to hold a koala. They were the second most cute animal in the zoo (first place goes to the ridiculous wombat,) but by Lauren’s reckoning, you can’t get any cuter. So we lined up once more and Lauren got a chance to hold Kramer the Koala.
Before I ran in for the professional shot:
All in all, a wicked day out. The highlight of Australia so far, would definately recommend it to anyone in the Queensland area, especially Noosa because you get a free coach to the zoo. It’s only $53 each and with the pictures and food and all we spent only around $80 for the whole day, that’s less than forty quids, well worth it.
Still cannot belive I held my biggest fear today. Woohoo!
At a tea plantation
In the jungle, it's hard to see here, but there's like a 50 ft drop behind us
This is me, on a sleeper bus, for 17 hours i
Nice, huh? Part of the Bayon at Angkor Wat
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