Crickey!

Visiting Australia Zoo was something of a childhood ambition for me. I often used to watch Steve Irwin's programs on Discovery with my friends and brother. Steve Irwin is a little bit of a national joke (something to do with getting his baby son Bobby a bit too close to a saltwater croc) but I was keen to see where they'd filmed the shows, the animals he worked with and the zoo that was his life's work.

I was not disappointed. The zoo is home to a whole host of mainly Aussie wildlife ranging from irresistibly cute to deadly killing machines. First we saw irresistibly cute in the form of wombats! Like giant guinea pigs, I tried to convince Josh they'd be great for mowing the lawn (I think he was sold on the idea). Next we saw various birds and roos before doubling back to make sure we didn't miss some of the deadly killing machines; Australia's snakes! Crikey!

It was quite fascinating to get up close (well, not too close) to some of the incredible snake species that neighbour the people of this country every day. They had most of the top 5 venomous snakes in the world in there. Absolutely terrifying to think that people walking their dogs in the park come can easily stumble across a death adder, or that a brown snake might happily slither through the back garden... I was however won over by the harmless carpet python. This sleepy chap helps control rodents and spends most of his day sunbathing in a tree. Seemed quite alright compared to some of his next door neighbours, which is just as well as it's commonly found in urban Australia!

Needing another dose of cute and fluffy we walked through the first koala enclosure where there were some pretty soggy, sleepy koala bears. They sort of wedge themselves between branches with their limbs all tucked up around them, I don't know how they don't wake up with pins and needles!

At midday we headed to the Crocoseum, a large amphitheatre with a croc pool in the middle. This was obviously an upgrade from Steve-0's fence jumping antics, with electric safety fences and lots of zoo keepers on crowd control. First they demonstrated some of the birds including a condor which was absolutely huge. Then they brought out snakes and showed a Burmese python swimming which was quite disturbing yet fascinating to see how easily it moved through the water. Then the main event, the croc! Three male keepers were in the arena, with one huge saltwater croc called 'Mossman', named after the village he'd been relocated from. One keeper actually got in the water with the croc which was impressive/stupid/good for the audience. The croc demonstrated a death roll, how it behaves when it caught prey and its inefficiency of movement on land.

After all the excitement of the Crocoseum we headed to see elephants being jet washed, gorgeous Sumatran tigers, more koalas, rhinos, a muddy zebra, a few giant stork-like birds, red pandas, Tasmanian devils and something called a binturong which was like a strange cat/bear thing. We looked around the old croc pools (still home to some of the crocs that were featured on the tv shows) and it felt a bit sad that Steve-O wasn't there to jump around telling people how grumpy the crocs were, or regaling tales of a particular crocs rescue. It is nice to see a lot of information about the work he did across the zoo, and to see long term plans becoming realised, such as the 'Africa' area. We stopped at one last koala enclosure (there are about 4 across the zoo) before heading to the gift shop and on to our next campsite. Crikey what an awesome day!

Anna x