Crikey!

A trip to Queensland is not complete without a day at the Australia Zoo! Made famous by it's late director, Steve 'Crocodile Hunter' Irwin, it's a showcase of the best of Australiasian wildlife. Tom, Ade, and I booked a tour to the zoo from our hostel since we were all too lazy to go through Greyhound and wanted to be picked up from our place directly. On the hour long ride to the zoo, we were given some decent commentary on the zoo's beginnings and were shown a documentary on Steve Irwin, which made me sad because he seemed like such a nice guy and really cared about the animals and now he's gone.

We get to the zoo and immediately proceed to the 'Crocoseum' (I swear that's the real name) and sat thru some cheesy segments, definitely geared to children, that included snakes, birds
and crocodiles. The croc in my pics is Graham and he is a beauty! One pissed off beauty, but a beauty nonetheless. Afterwards I saw my friend Vicky from Cairns and she was volunteering at the zoo for a week. How awesome! I wish I would have known you could do that cuz I would have signed up immediately. The boys and I visited the petting zoo and proceeded thru the other parts. We petted some koalas, saw the most ginormous snake ever, and spent a good bit of time in Roo Heaven. Roo Heaven was a sprawling enclosure full of kangaroos that you could just go up to and pet, cuddle or feed some roo food. I was instantly in love with them all! I think I petted each one and now have a collection of a million roo pics on my thumb drive. The novelty of kangaroos (and koalas) never wears off!

One thing that kinda disturbed us was the exploitation of Steve Irwin's daughter, Bindi Irwin. This 9 yr old's name and face was plastered everywhere and it reminded me a little of JonBenet Ramsey. I have no doubt the little girl's interest in wildlife conservation, but I doubt she is coming up with all the crap her name in involved with. For example, she has a whole line of clothing called 'Bindi Wear' and one of the items in the food court was called the 'Bindi Burger' which was kinda creepy. One touching part was the lovely tribute to Steve Irwin outside the Crocoseum with notes, paintings, shirts, etc from people all over the world. Again, that made me sad because he was loved by so many people and taken way too early.

It was a great day at the zoo and I swear every time I visit a zoo I promise to become a vegetarian, but crumble within hours. I'm going to do it one day and really mean it!