17:58 Sat.
11 Nov, 2017

Crocodile Hunter

Landsborough , Australia
23 °C
Mostly Sunny
6:10 am
12:00 am

On Tuesday morning the only trip we had planned well in advances was about to happen. First stop was local car dealership where we rented a car. I was quite nervous driving through such a big city on the opposite side of the road for the first time, but after an hour or so I got used to it. The car had automatic transmission which helped a lot, since I didn’t have to shift with my left hand. I did however turn on the wipers couple of times instead of the turn signal.

Driving on the left side for the first time.
Driving on the left side for the first time.

After about an hour and half of driving we reached our destination The Australian Zoo. The zoo was first created by legendary Steve Irwin – the crocodile hunter and is now run by his family.

The ZOO is quite large, about 2 or 3 times the size of the Koala sanctuary. The whole philosophy of the zoo is that you can book private encounters with most of the animals they have. This one is to some degree more traditional zoo as they also have animals not native to Australia, like giraffes, rhinos and so on. Speaking of foreign animals the first thing we had planned after coming, was encounter with lemurs.  We were very excited about it for quite some days already. ZOO keeper told us everything we needed to know on our way to the island where lemurs lived.  To reach the island we had to go on a small raft and as we were closing toward the island lemurs were already running around the landing port waiting eagerly for us. We brought food for them after all.

Lemur Island. Running toward us as we arrived.
Lemur Island. Running toward us as we arrived.

They were soon all over us and we had a chance to take some photos while they were standing on our shoulders. Despite their look they are quite heavy and having one on shoulders ruins ones posture. 🙂

After the photo shooting we  sat on a close by rock and zookeepers gave us some food that we could give them. By the looks of it they eat everything from vegetables to meat. They had great variety of food to choose from but they seemed to really like peas as they picked them out and ate them first.  We had the opportunity to touch/pet them meanwhile (especially on their tail). If the kangaroo’s fur was soft before, it was nothing compared to lemurs. It is hart to describe but their fur was softer than silk. It would be perfect pillow material.

Feeding Lemurs
Feeding Lemurs

Time flew and after about half an hour it was time for us to leave. We had high expectations about this encounter even before arriving to Australia and Veronika and I both agree that it was worth it. It is simply hard to express how cool it was, all I can say is if you ever happen to be in Australia, it’s worth taking a plane just to visit this zoo and have an encounter with lemurs.

After the lemurs we had to hurry to catch the show this zoo is most famous about – the crocodile show. The show is held in the arena and they demonstrate some tricks with a bunch of birds and of course the crocodile. Surprisingly I preferred the birds part compared to crocodile. They had great variety of birds from parrots, cockatoos to enormous condor. Seriously that thing was about 3-4m over the wings.  The funniest part was when they trained a cockatoo to go to a random visitor and take 5$ bill out of his hand (you can see this in the video below).

After the birds they brought out a giant crocodile which they fed and made jump a bit out of the water.

After the show we had a chance to visit the rest of the zoo. They had vast variety of animals, tons of crocodiles, koalas and of course the kangaroos. We also saw some giant lizards and very fun otters.

We also saw some gigantic turtles, cassowary and the most venomous snake in the world, safely behind the glass, of course.

When walking around the dingo’s enclosure we saw them attack one of the smaller lizards (who were again walking all over zoo). After the zookeepers saw that, they went in and the dingoes were running around them like dogs – expect the one who had the lizard in his mouth. He was running away from the zookeepers. After the zookeeper finally got the lizard from the dingo they took him to the animal hospital they have in front of the zoo.

Dingoes fetching some lizards
Dingoes fetching some lizards

Talking about walking a dog… you can actually walk a cheetah here.

Walking cheetah in Australian zoo.
Walking cheetah in Australian zoo.

In the late afternoon we had another encounter booked, this time with a native animal we did not see in nature yet – the wombat. The encounter was fun, but nothing compared to lemurs. Supposedly wombats get scared easily so we could only pet them from behind where they have some super protective ass area or something. Veronika did massaged one really nicely however, it went pancake flat on the plate of food.

Just as the last zoo this one also had two enormous enclosures full of kangaroos you could pet and feed. It was just as fun as previous day and this time I also did some posing with them. We finally saw one with baby (joey) in the pouch.

Le Moustache.
Le Moustache.

We also saw some white kangaroos.

With this we concluded our visit to the zoo, it was fun day’s trip and we did see enormous amount of animals. It’s well worth visiting.

Koala close up.
Koala close up.

Since we had a car, we decided not to take the highway back to Brisbane but take a longer rout that goes more inland. Sadly it was soon dark but it was an interesting experience. Couple of minutes of driving toward the mainland the road went from asphalt to gravel and soon we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere.  We stopped at the top of a small hill where there was no (city/house) light for as far as the eye could see and in between there were some pointy mountains growing from nowhere.

We arrived to Brisbane couple of minutes before midnight and prepared for next day when we were living for Gold Coast.

 

18:51 Sun.
5 Nov, 2017

I wonder what animal we will see?

Brisbane , Australia
19 °C
Partly Cloudy
4:53 am
6:10 pm

Monday morning we took an hour bus through the Brisbane’s suburbs to the Lone Pines Koala Sanctuary. Despite it’s name it is a normal zoo, with multiple species of Australian animals.

Sup homie?
Sup homie?

The zoo is of moderate size, maybe a bit smaller than Ljubljana’s. The main difference compared to the standard zoos elsewhere is that you can actually take a photo with a koala or go and feed a kangaroo. Yea, that’s right, kangaroos just roam large enclosure where you can enter or leave at your leisure. Moreover you can buy some kangaroo food for couple of $ and you can actually feed them.

Feeding a kangaroo
Feeding a kangaroo

We saw variety of sizes of kangaroos ranging from a small ones to the ones you could look straight into their eyes when they were standing in front of you. Despite being very muscular and large, we felt quite safe around them. They were mostly chilling, I guess being fed by the tourists whole days long gets them super lazy.

We were pretty excited about petting them, one thing that surprised me the most was how soft their fur was. It looks rough and dirty where in reality it was silky soft (even with the big ones) almost like a puppy.

Kangaroo
Kangaroo

Besides kangaroos we also watched a bird show where they flew some owls and eagles around and told us about them. It was interesting to see them fly just few centimetres in front of us.

Eagle
Eagle

And to see an owl gulp up whole mouse in a couple of seconds.

After the birds we went to see a sheep show, where they used 3 dogs to bring a group of ship from one side of the park to the other. It was fun watching the dogs run around the sheep while bringing them home alone. They also looked like they had a lot of fun, guess it beats fetching a stick.

After the shows we took the opportunity to hold a koala and take a photo with it. Again just like with kangaroos it’s fur was very soft, and it was surprisingly heavy.

Me and Veronika posing with a koala. One of my favourite photos from the trip.
Me and Veronika posing with a koala. One of my favourite photos from the trip.

Besides holding it we also had an opportunity to watch in several enclosures around the zoo. However they are not very active animals and sleep more than 20 hours per day. Luckily we were just in time for the zookeepers to change their food (eucalyptus) which made them a bit more active as they climbed around to get to the food.

All over the zoo we saw hundreds of large lizards. For some reason they weren’t enclosed but were freely running around the paths trying to find some sun rays.

Big lizard
Big lizard

Again we saw some dingoes, they were just remodelling their enclosure so they were in a smaller one but still seemed pretty happy. I think they were quite tamed and used to people. I think I saw some zookeepers walking one just like a dog.

So far most of the animals we saw we also saw in nature, or at least their close relatives. They did however have a couple of animals that are a bit more exotic that we didn’t see before.

And we also saw the strangest of all the animals – the platypus.

All in all we had a great day. We spent most of the time among kangaroos which were most fun to interact with and saw a couple of quite exotic animals for an European. However just next day we had a plan to visit something we knew since day one of our planning we will visit (hint: another zoo).

Some more photos from the zoo.