We left Surfers Paradise on Friday 26th June after hearing on the radio while in the shower that Michael Jackson had died! What a shocker that was and such a shame. It'll be another one of those moments people will talk about where they say "I remember where I was when I heard Michael Jackson had died". RIP Michael.

On the way up to Beerwah we drove over to Pacific Pines which is a residential area on the Gold Coast where a lot of expats live so we could see what it was like. Very nice, would happily live there!! We then went to the Daisy Hill Koala Centre in the hope of seeing some more cute Koala's, but typical of our luck recently, it was closed for refurbishment so we carried on north. As we got closer to Brisbane the heavens opened and the traffic crawled so what should have took us 2 hours ended up being 5 hours so we got to a very soggy Landsborough Pines Caravan Park in the pitch black, and then had the pleasure of cooking on the BBQ in a shelter which had the worst spider infestation imaginable! EURGH!!!!

Saturday. HORRAY its stopped raining!!! To start with we headed to the Glass House Mountains to have a look around. These are several mountains that Captain Cook named after the Yorkshire Glass Blowing Factories. They are nearly vertical mountains and look totally out of place as the rest of the land is flat. They are old lava plugs left behind from millions of years ago when the rest of the land got worn away, but they look very impressive anyway. After this we drove to Bribie Island on the coast to have a walk on the beach as it was nice and sunny, before we stocked up on ready meals to cook in the microwave in Bolt so we didn't have to go near the kingdom of spiders, AKA, the BBQ area for the rest of our stay. But, the reason we stayed at this site is because its 2km from what we wanted to do for the next two days.....

Sunday & Monday. AUSTRAAAAAAAALIA ZOO!! CRIKEY WE'RE HERE MATE! We were both so looking forward to going to the late Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo that we were up extra early and were at head of the queue before the gates even opened. Even in the queue we saw a little alligator and cookatoo that the handlers were carrying round. RIPPER!! We brought a 2 day pass each to make the most of it as the Zoo is huge, and also being school holidays there was an extra treat because Terri, Bindi & Robert Irwin, and also Wes who was Steve's best mate were doing the Crocoseum show! YEAH!!!

Australia Zoo is fantastic, by far the best zoo we have ever been to! It is spotlessly clean for humans and animals, and all the enclosures are done in a way that they don't look closed in as everything looks natural and open. Its really impressive to see and it means you get to see every animal up close. They also have lots of animal handlers just walking round the zoo with various animals you can touch such as alligators, lizards, snakes, cockatoos and even a camel of all things! First stop had to be the Kookaburra's as we hadn't seen these before and man they are awesome! They have a really distinctive laughing call unlike any other bird, plus they are cute as heck and look light a fluffy, podgy, kingfisher. Little beaut! We then went and saw a Komodo Dragon which was brilliant as again we'd never seen one before, then further round we found what Em was looking for. Yep, the Koala's, all fast asleep as usual surrounded by lots of people going "awwwww how cute". Later in the day Em got to proper hug one for a photo and his name was Kramer and he was gorgeous, a right little beaut. Oh yeah, a good bit of info, totally not related to animals was that in the food court they had gluten free fast food options which ended up being the best snags (sausages) we've ever had at a bargain price of $2. Another good thing that Australia Zoo do is they don't rip people off with the price of food/drinks once in the zoo. We also ended up getting a new addition to Em's crew in the form of a cute Koala ted which we have called Bindi. She's gorgeous!

BTW, sorry for all the Steve'isums but it has to be done, especially when at Australia Zoo!

Around the rest of the zoo we also saw lots of crocs (man they look mean), wombats, tasmanian devils, kangaroo's, echidna's, red pandas, dingos, cassowary's, snakes and lots of exotic birds. But the main reason for the zoo has to be the Crocosuem!!

Steve had the Crocoseum built to seat 3000 people so he could show people as he called it, why CROCS RULE! Em and I are both big fans of Steve and his Croc Hunter show so getting to see the Crocoseum was one of our highlights for Oz, and it was made even more special as like we said, the Irwin family plus Wes were doing the show. The show was really good and had lots of different animals on to start with before the main croc part came on and Terri, Bindi, Robert and Wes all came running into the arena. Its such as shame that Steve died as he would be so proud of them. :(

The croc came in and Terri did the feeding on the edge of the water before getting him to tail whip out the water and into the air which was pretty impressive. Wes then had Bindi feed the croc before he did the feeding and got it to death roll - make that 5 death rolls!! It was really funny as when the croc first went for Wes it caught him off guard a bit because it got really close and you heard him say "oh s***, i mean oh crikey" and everyone laughed while he pegged it away. Overall though the show was superb and had a great educational spin on it, while still keeping it centered around the zoo, Steve and protecting wildlife. We also saw the show on the second day as well as it was that good.

Finally, after the show under the Crocoseum we went to an area which is a memorial to Steve. There are rows of display boards covered in Khaki shirts with messages about Steve which were left outside the zoo from when he died nearly 3 years ago. Its actually really moving reading the messages as you can see how much people liked him by reading the messages. There was also an area of his life in photos, all proper funny to look at along with lots of articles about him and the zoo. We spent a good amount of time reading everything we could and it was really nice. Also, while we were walking back from the tiger enclosure we noticed Robert Irwin playing with a security guard out the back of one of the areas. He was covered in mud and my god, he is the spitting image of Steve both in the looks and the way he talks and acts. Priceless!!!

So thats it, 2 days at Australia Zoo. What an amazing place that was and lived up to all exceptions! WOOOOO WHAT A RIPPER!!

Miss ya Steve.