CRIKEY!....It's a ripper!
Trip Start
Nov 24, 2008
1
21
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Trip End
Apr 13, 2009
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Well CRIKEY indeed! What an unbelivably awesome place!!! Best zoo ever and i wouldn't care if i never got to go to another zoo again!!
The good thing about it is that it doesn't overwhelm you with lots of strange species of animals, that you don't really care about seeing. The majority of the animals featured are from Australia. You do however get overwhelmed by the ongoing 'presence' of Steve Irwin (there is no other way to put it!) All the staff mention him in talks and you can see first hand the effect he had on everything and every one. There is a beautiful memorial bit where all the staff and people that knew him signed a khaki shirt (the only thing he would wear!) there must have been 100 shirts, and pinned up poems and paintings and drawings of him and his kids. It was definately moving.
I think the highlight of the day was the croc show in the famous 'Crocoseum!' We were lucky enough to have the show presented by Terry Irwin and Wes, his kids Bindi and Robert were in the audience! The croc show was fantastic!! Wes had a close call, quote 'Shit he nearly got my crotch!' unquote, came blaring over the speakers, tres hilarious!! But they really do get quite close to the animals!
Around the zoo you can have close encounters with baby animals such as crocs and koalas etc. we seemed to keep missing these, but we still managed to have our close encounter. We posed with a 16kg python, and believe it or not, thats a baby!! They can grow to 100kg, it was quite heavey on your shoulders and i made it quite clear that the head was to go up with Steve!! We aso got to cuddle a Koala, (which by the way is the only place in the world that you can cuddle them, it is illegal everywhere else!!) and as you see from the pics she really took a liking to Steve!!
Feeding the elephants was amazing aswell,altho they also took a liking to Steve as she gave his hand a big slobbery kiss before she took the food!! (see mucky hand photo!!) they really let you get up close with all the animals! Especially the Kangaroos, we spent absolutely ages feeding them trying to get some great photos, we think we acheived this, about 172 pics later!! But they are so gentle and will just lick the food out of your hand!
We also got up to scratch on our deadly snake knowledge, quite handy to know now we're heading up north to the tropics where the like to hang out! CRIKEY!!!
