Saturday, 08/09/2012 - 85 A.D.
I got up this morning to the sound of someone (quite possibly Elise) being sick in the bathroom nearest to our room, so I used the far one. It hadn’t been that bad a stay at Cotton Tree Backpackers, but it was pretty cold in the night and both of us had to call on extra blankets – the kind that have “marks” upon them that you try to keep at the other end of the bed and away from your face.
Catching the Greyhound to Australia Zoo was a straightforward affair and we arrived not long after 10:00. I’m sure you’re all well aware of the background behind the zoo and you all watched The crocodile hunter diaries when it was on television, just like me. Booking our tickets online in advance enabled us to jump the queues, which was good because we naturally had all of our gear with us, and we were somehow able to squeeze both of our big bags into a single large locker.
The first thing you notice upon walking round is that there are lots of big lizards roaming free amongst the visitors. The eastern water dragons pretty much have the run of the site and the males have divided the zoo into their own small territories which they fiercely patrol.
Fortunately the largest lizards, the komodo dragons, were behind glass, because those boys have been known to attempt to eat humans when desperate. Not a million miles away from the dragons in appearance and distance, we came upon the saltwater crocodiles, all hanging out lazily by the sides of their pool. Not as big as their freshwater cousins, you obviously still don’t mess with them and there were plenty of warning signs against climbing over the fence (as if!)
The Tasmanian devils were up next, constantly on the move, one of them displayed the disturbing sign of twirling around on the spot like a dog does when it chases its tail. They were smaller than I thought they would be, but still looked menacing when they opened their jaws in a yawn / display of aggression. Because they were moving about so much it became very difficult to get shorty in the shot I would have liked, but that’s tazzies for you.
Onward we went, past dingos, cassowaries and camels, stopping occasionally to say hello to the eastern water dragons as they went about their patrols. Do you remember those school trips to the farm where you could feed the animals? They have a similar thing here with sheep, goats, piglets, etc. But the thing that Australia Zoo is probably most famous for is the crocodile feeding and at midday there was to be the daily demonstration in the “crocoseum”.
After a bit of banter for the kids (one side of the stadium has to do monkey impressions, the other does another creature and the winning team gets…I dunno, the glory of winning, I guess), various birds are released to do impressive circuits of the stadium, sometimes flying so close that they seem to whizz past your ear. Next comes a bit of entertainment / education about snakes and what to do and what not to do if you get bitten by one. Finally, they start to bring out the crocs, a tiny one first, then a big `un that’s to be fed Steve Irwin-style. It’s a different one each day and today’s was the scarily-named ‘Murray’, which was pretty cool because I remembered watching him being fed by Steve on TV a long time ago. Fortunately nothing went wrong and it was top entertainment.
As the afternoon rolled around, we went and had a lot of fun in “Roo Heaven”, which is where the snakes live. No, actually, it’s where the kangaroos hang out. The beauty of Roo Heaven is that it’s open ground so the roos can come and mingle with the human beings, who can buy some roo feed from the vending machine. There is also a chill out area for the roos if they want to be free of human fingers constantly poking their way. As soon as we entered the place Tim and I were happy to find a lone kangaroo hanging out away from the rest and for a few minutes we effectively had him (or her - we didn't check) to ourselves. And if you ever pondered whether kangaroo fur was hard to stroke, well, it’s actually very soft, so no more pondering necessary.
If you’ve been able to read the last few blog posts without getting bored then you may remember when we went to Magnetic Island and got a glimpse of a koala in the wild. BORING! It’s much more fun when they’re up close and sitting in every eucalyptus tree, as they were along the Koala Walk-Through. And when they are within touching distance and not so excellently camouflaged you can see just how adorable they are. Check out the koala in the first shot below – because it was actually within touching distance (for a lanky lad like me, at least), I couldn’t resist the urge to reach out and give it a pat, and duly got told off for my actions. “Those ones aren’t for touching!” declared a gruff zookeeper, himself seemingly camouflaged. I duly apologised and walked six feet across the enclosure to the designated koala that you were allowed to pat.
The Africa section of the zoo is the most recent and as such it’s a bit lacking, given that there’s only a rhino, a zebra and a few giraffe in the whole enclosure. Still, just a few years ago they didn’t have anything, so they’ve done well in that respect. Other creatures we saw around here were Indian elephants, a red panda, and the three Bengal tigers having their daily toy-chase with their keepers. It was quite astounding how friendly these highly dangerous animals were with the humans, but the guy running the demo did say it takes at least two years to introduce a handler to a tiger. There was also an amusing incident when a very game eastern water dragon got into the enclosure and distracted the tigers from their toys. It looked like an unplanned dinner course was about to commence, but the keepers were able to get to the lizard before the tigers and took it to safety.
‘The Wetlands’ is the area in the park where most of the big birds like jabirus and storks are kept. I say “kept”, but there are essentially free-ranging meaning that they come and go as they please, but given there’s plenty of free food available, they tend to stick around (unless the storks have to go and deliver any babies). Hmmm…what else did we see? Common wombats, southern hairy-nosed wombats, birds of prey, tortoises, turtles, otters, alligators and snakes.
It had been a long and fun-filled day at the zoo, but come 16:30 we had to get back on the Greyhound and head for Brisbane. Goodness knows when I’ll next get to explore the delights of caged and uncaged wild animals, but if they ever repeat The crocodile hunter diaries on telly then I’ll be sure to tune in.
Brisbane…why have we come to Brisbane? Well, it’s a big city (third biggest in Oz) and it’s on our way. That’s about as much as we know – our list of things to see and do has yet to be written. From what we can see so far, it looks like a smaller version of Sydney, not that we’ve seen what Sydney looks like in the first instance!
We’ve checked into City Backpackers hostel and been told in no uncertain terms that, because there is a bar on the premises, we are not allowed to take alcohol into our room. Even after the bar has closed. Apparently this is to do with having a Queensland liquor licence, but I just think they want to make you buy your booze at the bar. Plus they send “one of the girls” round in the morning to…what did she say…check that everyone who is supposed to be in the room is in fact in the room. Huh? Sounds to me like they’re on the lookout for empty ale cans!
Stuck without any options on our first night, as we often are, we went to the bar to order some food and enjoy ONE over-priced beer. They’ve actually got a pretty good rooftop terrace to sit at and look out over the lit-up city by night, though there’s a bit of a chill in the air at this time of year. And it was up here, as the whoops and the cheers from the Sunday night backpacking crowd grew ever louder that I had the following epiphany...the creatures in this place are wilder than any we saw at the zoo!
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