Our time in Maroochydore was
already coming to a close, and we (well…James in particular) had his morning
routine interrupted by the sound of someone
vomiting into the toilet. We could all guess who that was! It didn’t take long
to gather our stuff and get down to the bus stop, and we were there just as the
Greyhound bus pulled in. As per usual there were plenty of seats and I thought
back to the Greyhound driver who had said that the company was going down the
pan. I wasn’t surprised as the busses always seemed to be a quarter full at
best.
We arrived at the zoo after
only an hour on the bus and I had to smile when the kid we passed a few seats
down from us said, “Not fair, they’re going
to the zoo, why can’t we?”. We still had our big rucksacks with us so we found
the biggest locker available and crammed them both in. There was no way we were
going to pay for two mediums, not when a bit of grunt could get two into one. It
had just gone half 10 and we had already missed a few live shows, but we had a
map and a whole lot of zoo to see before noon when the next good live show
would be on.
Within the first few minutes we
had seem turtles, lizards and birds and were bearing down on the beasts the zoo
was famous for……the crocs! There were loads of them, all basking away in the
sunshine. You could get reasonably close to some of them, but obviously we didn’t
go and stick our fingers through the fence, that would have been silly. After
the crocs we ambled past the Tasmanian Devils, the Dingoes, the Cassowaries and
the Koala bears. It seemed weird to see these fluffy little fellas in the zoo
and not out in the wild as we had seen on Magnetic Island, but they were still
very cute nonetheless. It was getting close to 12:00 so we made our way across
to the Crocoseum to see the live show on Wildlife Warriors.
The Crocoseum is a fairly large
arena with stadium seating and we took some seats (in the shade, obviously) and
got lunch on the go whilst we waited for the show to begin. We were treated to
a plethora of wildlife flying round our heads and showing off in the arena with
the keepers, including a 14-foot crocodile chasing after a couple of chaps with
raw meat in their hands. It was incredibly informative and great fun to watch. I
could imagine Steve Irwin in the arena himself and just being so amazingly
enthusiastic about it all. Such as shame he wasn’t there.
After the show in the Crocoseum
we headed through Roo Heaven to see if we could get up close to a kangaroo or
two. We were in luck. As soon as we had walked into the enclosure we noticed a
few people clumped together, and sure enough it was around a kangaroo. We had
to wait a while for the last of the people to leave, but when they eventually
left we had carte blanche on the little fella. Having no change for the
kangaroo food vending machine we had to pretend that we had some and it fooled
the kangaroo, but only for a moment before it loped away from us. But that
moment was more than enough to grab a few snaps with it. Great stuff! As we
walked further into the park we noticed that there were many more of them and
everyone was up close and stroking them, so we joined in with everyone else.
They looked cute, but one glance at their long, sharp claws on their hind feet made
sure we weren’t going to antagonise one.
 |
| Me and a 'roo |
After the ‘roos it was time to
hit the wetlands and see all the free-range wild birds there. Essentially they
are free to come and go as they please, but they hang around for the free food
and shelter. A wise decision. Once we had passed through there we went to the
Koala Walkthrough where you could pat them, apparently. We saw some in the
artificially-made trees with eucalyptus leaves everywhere for them to eat and
clutch onto. I managed to reach up and stroke the first one we came across, but
when James tried the same he got told off by the keeper, something which I had
to chuckle about later! There was another set-up for the Koalas 3 meters away
and these ones you could pat, so we
did so and grabbed a few more pics. We also saw the red kangaroos nearby, very
similar to the grey ones we saw earlier.
 |
| Me and a Koala |
Then it was time to go to
Africa and see the zebra, giraffes and rhino. There wasn’t much to see, it was
clearly the newest addition to the zoo and it is probably work-in-progress so
unfair to judge it as it was. At 2:15 they were feeding the tigers in the
South-East Asia complex and we wandered down to see what we could see.
Unfortunately so had everyone else in the zoo and it was probably easier to
kill a mockingbird than get a good seat for the show! So we craned our necks
whilst they played with the tigers and we rued the decision not to have gotten
there earlier.
The last few things we saw were
the wombats, snakes, red pandas, birds of prey and the American alligators.
After all that it was getting late so we picked up our luggage and set off for
the bus stop. It didn’t take long to get to Brisbane from the zoo and it felt
good to be back in a big city with tall buildings and proper infrastructure. We
checked-in at the hostel and went for a walk to find some food. Eventually we
decided we should grab the burger meal from the hostel bar/kitchen and have a
jug of VB for dessert. Once we had demolished those I was about ready for some
shut-eye so turned in early to catch up on some much-need sleep.
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