Day 29- Australia Zoo

May 24, 2011- Day 29

Where: The Australia Zoo

Dinner: Fresh snapper given to us by a stranger when we parked for the night

Held a koala!!!!!

         Overnight camping at the service station was a success! Got up early to check with the Lonely Planet book about what to do in the area. We're out of Brisbane a bit and we're nearing the Sunshine Coast. We recently read about the Australia Zoo which is the zoo that Steve Irwin and his wife started. Seeing it in the book, we found out that it was rather expensive. We looked it up online, however, and found that they have all sorts of “animal encounters” where you can hold and feed different critters. My dad has been requesting a photo of me holding a koala for a while now, and I've been telling him that you can't hold them because they aren't nice animals and they will claw your face off. At Healesville Sanctuary you could pay to stand next to a koala and get a photo, but at this zoo you could pay to actually hold one!! Well this was the tipping point for me, and Pat's quite an animal fan so we decided we'd go to the zoo for the day. Such a good decision!

          This zoo is said to be an interactive zoo and that's exactly what it was. The zoo keepers are all very hands on with the animals, helping raise many of them from birth. We went to quite a few of the zoo keeper talks about different animals and we saw the big show where they brought out birds of prey, elephants, snacks, and of course because it's Steve Irwin's zoo, crocodiles. For the show they just brought out one huge saltwater croc, the really dangerous ones. They got him to jump out of the water for meat and showed how they wait perfectly still while they stalk the prey then lung for them really quickly. It was pretty cool. They told us about easy it is to avoid crocs, which is good info to have before we head up to Darwin and into croc country. In the zoo there were many different croc ponds, as they were Irwin's favorite animals. There was also a lot of information about all the work Irwin did with animals in his life, and what his family is continuing to do.

         All of the animal habits were extremely well made, and the elephants has a particularly elaborate home made to look like SE Asia. They had 3 big Asian elephants which was get to feed in the afternoon. They gave us bits of apples, zucchini, and carrots and you held them out to the elephants. It felt funny to have their trucks reach out and grab it out of my hand. Two of them used the tip of their trunk more like fingers to pick up the food and the other one would wrap the tip of its trunk around the food and swipe it from you. Such incredibly smart animals.

         We watched a tiger exhibit where they had the tigers do some different displays with the trainers. They would use milk to get the tigers to stand up tall on their hind legs and they would even wrap their front paws around the trainers necks. So neat to see how well the animals can be trained, and to see what a bond can be made between tigers and humans. The zoo helps raise money to support different organizations in SE Asia that work to protect threatened animals like tigers and elephants.

         The highlight of my day, however, was my koala encounter. I was so, so excited going into it. Pat took a picture where I look like an excited 5 year old waiting in line. It was really was about as staged as you can get, but I didn't even care. These are my favorite animals ever. They have an animal photo area with a backdrop and they had a keeper bring in a koala. I went up and they showed me how to hold my arms and then they set him into them. I have the biggest smile in the picture because he's so cute and cuddly! He didn't do much but sit there, but they took my picture and I got to hold him for about a minute. Pat took a video of it and I got a great picture that they took. I was a happy lady :D

        Actually, before I even held the koala we were in a koala exhibit and the keeper showed us a ladder where we could go up and pet the back of the koala sitting low in the tree. This koala was very fluffy and soft and I spent more time petting this one than the one I got to hold. But holding it was just so cool! With it's little arms around you. Still gets me excited when I think about it.

          The other animals we spent a lot of time with were the kangaroos. They had a huge area covered in trees where they kept all the roos and wallabies. You could buy little bags of roo food (pellets and dried corn) and wander all over, feeding any of the roos you wanted. Early in the morning they were laying all over the place being super laze. Later in the afternoon they were a bit more active, but I think that zoo kangaroos are just lazy by nature. Heck, they don't even have to move and people will come bring food to them. We did get up close with many different ones who would come up and eat out of our hands. We even fed a couple roos who had a little joey in their pouch. First time I have seen this. Ridiculously cute. Oh man. Pat made friends with one roo and after feeding him for a while we eventually ran out of food. Pat held up his hands and was shaking them to show that he didn't have anymore food and the roos was using his stubby little hands to grasp at Pat's hands as he moved them. It was really funny, and I happened to be taking a video at the time so that was good timing.
          Overall it was just such a fun day. We were both in really good moods and it was nice to have a day where all we had to do was look at cute animals and not make decisions about where to drive or what to do. We agree on everything at the zoo! Except that Pat likes the red pandas the best and I like koalas the best. I had never seen red pandas before and they really are pretty amazing. They are beautiful, with fur coats that fade from reddish orange to dark red brown. They have cute little white faces and bushy striped tails. You should probably look them up if you haven't seen one before. They are pretty unusual to see, so Pat was in red panda heaven.

        I know I am rambling on about animals, but I have to mention that we saw wombats for the first time. Oh man, they are really cute! They are short and fat, which makes them like big rectangular fur balls. It makes me even more sad to think about then getting hit on the road because they are just so dang cute. They walk around eating grass all the time, and apparently they have a big bone plat in their butts so that they can sit down hard on predators to smash them. How funny is that?! Oh wombats, I love you. I even bought a little stuffed wombat to sit in the van. He's our mascot. He just needs a name now.

       We were tired after a long day walking in the sun (thankfully the rain is gone!) and we just drove to the coast for the night. We pulled into a boat launch to park and soon after an old guy walked up to the van with a fish. He asked if we were camping and if we wanted this whole snapper that he has just caught and cleaned. Ah, yes please! Pat was excited to fry it up whole. Fresh fish sure is a treat, especially for free with no work involved! I think I like Queensland.

       Oh yes, and after dinner we saw a dingo a little ways away but it ran off. Now Pat it peeking out the window doing a "dingo watch." He keeps talking about how he wants to find one and play with it. I think he's doing it to tease me because I keep talking about how he can't play with wild animals. It's ok, dingo watch 2011 seems to be rather uneventful at this point.