Sunday 2nd January 2011
An unfamiliar early start for the Franks, but today we're heading for Hervey Bay via Steve Irwin's zoo. I couldn't wait to get there, we had heard so much good stuff about the zoo that in my haste i got pulled by the local fuzz for doing 118kmph in a 100kmph zone. Oooooppppssiiiee!! I wasn't quite saying oopsie when he told that doing 18kmph over the speed limit resulted in a $200 fine.
£135 for 10mph over? JESUS!!!
The constable (this is no time for jokes) asked if I was in a rush today and I replied "not really, just keen to get to the zoo!" I'm not sure if he was an animal lover himself but he decided to let me off.... PHEW!! So I rejoined the motorway at 100kmph and we carried on our journey. We planned to get to the zoo for 10:30 in time to feed the elephants but with gaining an hour going to Queensland we actually arrived at 09:00, just in time for opening. Yeah!
Just around the corner from that little fella was the aligator pens, there were about 7 or 8 of them in seperate pens but this old gal born in the 1930's was my favourite!
As we turned around to move on we noticed that one of the larger aligators had escaped, we were shocked (not too shocked, I still managed to take a picture) as he made a beeline for Suz....
not really! Although this is a life size replica of one ol' Steve saw out in the wild.... CRIKEY! Around the next corner were the turtles, tortoise and bearded dragons.
We got a drink and headed over to the Kangaroo enclosure, this was just a park with trees and loads of "roos" chilling out in the sunshine. We were able to buy some roo food before entering and then blow me if they didn't just hop on over for some brekkie out of my hand, unbelievable! I've wanted to see one for years and then all of a sudden I was feeding one, he took his time too, holding on to my hand to make sure I didn't get away!
There was Mummy kangaroo with a Joey in her pouch. They give birth to them when they are just the size of a jelly bean. Bald, blind, deaf and furless they crawl up a trail of Mum's saliva into her pouch where they suckle for 6 months without even popping out to say hello. This one was just 7 months old and had begun to check out the outside world. They then start to spend more and more time outside until they reach 12 months old when it's time to go it alone.
It was almost elephant feeding time so we dashed back across the zoo, on the way we spotted them being walked across to the feeding point.
Now, unfortunatley me and the wife hadn't figured out why the park was so quiet, in the baking heat, in the middle of the school holidays, because up until this point we'd basically had the run of the place. It turned out that everyone was queing around the block to feed the elephants so we gave it a miss and headed over to the "Crocoseum" to get prime seats for the "wild warriors" show at 11:00. This was truly incredible. Steve's wife Terri now runs the show and they brought out a really angry Croc called Charlie who didn't look like he was in the mood for any messing about, they stomped about to attract him to them and then ran away as he struck, it was ace. Then they got on to the platform and got him to jump up for some dinner, really really good!
We caught the shuttle over to the South East Asia enclosure and caught a glimpse of a Red panda from the Himalayas, they aren't used to the heat so they have an air conditioned log to cool off in.
In addition to the koala's just hanging around (no pun intended) they also have a koala walk where you can get really up close and pat them, Suz was very excited about this.
She was delighted to hear there was a joey in there too, nine months old and unbelievably cute. We couldn't pet him though because Mum was still pretty protective and they can be pretty viscious.
Afetr the cute and cuddly we went to the other extreme and checked out the snake house.
This is another viscious inhabitant of Australia, a cassowary.
By far the best bit of the day was the tiger demonstration.
The tigers have been at the zoo from being babies and spend the first 3 to 4 months with the keepers 24 hours a day to build up a relationship. Consequently they are tame enough for the keepers to get into the enclosure with them. They jump up onto the keepers to demonstrate how they would check their teeth and claws.
They also had one of the girls climbing up the tree for a meaty treat.
The last treat of the day was one of the cheetah - they aren't in an enclosure at the zoo yet and live 'behind the scenes' but are brought into the zoo on a regular basis to get them used to the public in a graded exposure programme. What a job! 'I walked the cheetah today'!
After an awesome day at 3.00pm we had to bid the animals farewell and hit the road as we still had a few hours driving ahead of us. Suz decided to take the wheel in the intersts of budget (avoiding $200 fines!). So I made good use of the time by having a nap!
This was our last journey that we would be doing the driving. We spotted a few of our favourite signs along the way....
'Stop, revive, survive!' to combat tired drivers on the road!
.... and instead of a 'No Entry' sign which would do just nicely the Aussies have the far more explanatory 'WRONG WAY - GO BACK'!!!!!
After a quick KFC stop (beacuse we could find it!) for tea we rocked up in Hervey Bay at 6.30pm and checked into our hostel. And joy of joys we were greeted with another bunk bed..... well a choice of bunks really! We had booked a private double room with en auite and got a private room with 3 bunk beds in it - so a choice of 6 beds!!!! The lady on reception explained that this was all that the hostel had. Too tired to argue we made our way out into the town to see what it had to offer..... Not much! This is largely a retirement town with some backpackers waiting to head off to Fraser Island and not much else. After a couple of schoobers of beer we were done in after an exciting day and needed to sleep.
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