Day 10 - Authentic Kangaroo Testicles

Clarkey having not had an awful lot of sleep had come up a with a plan for the day. First stop the bakers for a naughty pastry for breakfast. Then the post office to get stamps for a few postcards. And then find a cafe for a coffee for Clarkey and a smoothy for Holly. Perfect, good plan Clarkey.
This productive morning was to be followed up by a trip to the Wildlife Habitat, a zoo / nature reserve boasting all the native animals that we had yet to see. At the entrance an overly excited Clarkey insists on a bag of Kangaroo feed and a spotters guide to identify the many birds, frogs, turtles, marsupials etc.
Our first stop was to see the endangered Cassowary, the most bizarre, prehistoric looking animal on earth! A red and blue turkey neck, a large horn/blade on its head, the body of an ostrich and the feet of a Velociraptor. It would only follow around the game keeper, so he had to keep moving so we could get good shots of the bird.
Next up was the Koalas! Yippee! As we edged into the enclosure the first 'bear' was only a mere 3m away, but has rapped himself so tightly around the tree and in the leaves all we saw was his very cute fury back and ears. There were 3 Koalas in total, all unfortunately sleeping as we entered during their 19hr power nap!
Next we hopped onto the free Crocodile tour. For the first time in a year they were doing a 'live feed' in the enclosure, so we were pretty lucky to have picked this date to go! First up was the Salt water crocs, the largest reptiles on the planet. We met Sheila the female croc. At 3m she was considered small, but still very deadly. As the game keepers banged their food buckets over the side of the enclosure the male finally decided to venture out of the water, and boy was he big! At a whopping 4.5m he was huge and wide and very interested in all the people standing only 1.5m above him. Both chickens we're thrown in, and ignored! They threw them to different ends to keep the crocs apart, as they would kill each other for food. Both standing on the feed as they were too lazy to move they suddenly made a dart for each other, but all they wanted was each other's chicken, not to fight each other! Phew! After a few jumps up towards dangling arms the crowd stepped back with a little squeal and we moved on. Next we met the fresh water crocs, much smaller in size and much longer snouts. They were fed 1 day old chicks and if they didn't bounce straight into their mouths they couldn't be bothered to move and get them!
After the croc tour we walked through the Kangaroo and Wallaby enclosure. As we had a short talk from the keeper on kangaroos one very large kangaroo stood up and started wandering over, with no fences in between us. Fortunately as he reached us the keeper said "this is Bruce, he is very friendly". Within seconds he was eating the feed from our hands, and lots of photos were taken. He was very gentle but quite wet as he lapped the food from out hands. Whilst we were feeding him, we also noticed he was a 'big boy' in a different department too..! A few more friendly roos and wallabys ate from out hands but the geese got excited so we moved on.
Having spent at least 2hrs wondering around meeting the animals and ticking them off our spotters guide we decided to drop in on the Surf Life Saving Club for lunch. After being over stuffed with good food we headed back to Cairns for our last night in Frank, our trusty camper. We spent the evening packing and repacking our bags (it all came put, it must all go back in), ready for our flight to Melbourne tomorrow.