Today was Kelly's 26th birthday so we got up a bit early and she opened her cards and presents; we got her an awesome present of an Australia themed tea towel and coasters for when she moves house. As Dave said, we never thought we'd ever buy her a tea towel for a birthday present!

We were off to the Australia Zoo today and caught the shuttle bus at 8:30. On the way, they played a DVD of one of Steve Irwin's many documentaries to get us in the mood. At the zoo, we got our map and programme of animal shows; there was a lot to see so we had to plan our day carefully! First, we caught the mini train to get us to the elephant feeding session, where we each got to feed Sabu the elephant! Then we had to get back to the 'Crocoseum' for the main show of the day.

The Crocoseum was made famous by Steve Irwin himself - he used to do the croc show there in order to educate people about them and another animals. This has been continued since his death and, as it was the school holidays, we were lucky to see his children Bindi and Robert along with his wife Terri. It was a really entertaining show and we saw displays featuring lots of birds from the zoo along with the main display - Graham the croc! The Irwins demonstrated how crocs behave in the wild by enticing poor Graham with meat. He even did a death roll, which apparently take a lot of energy and are only performed as a last resort!

For lunch, we'd brought our own food after being ripped off in San Diego zoo and we had a picnic (including cake!) We were joined by a water dragon who was very interested in our crumbs.

In the afternoon, we saw the koala show where we got to stroke Bailey the koala and we took the train to 'Africa', which is a new part of the zoo and is meant to represent an African safari with giraffes, zebras and rhinos all in the same enclosure. This is a work in progress and is a tribute to Steve Irwin, whose dream it was to bring African animals to his zoo.

By the end of the day we were exhausted and just as we were waiting for our shuttle bus back to Noosa the heavens opened and it rained heavily all the way back. The DVD for the return journey was a tribute to Steve Irwin made after his death. It was quite a moving documentary focusing on his dreams for the zoo as well as his close relationship with, and influences on, his children.

Back at the hostel, we had a few hours to relax and get ready before heading out for Kel's birthday meal. While on the sunset cruise yesterday we saw a row of restaurants in Noosaville and the driver said that there were about twenty in a row so we thought that that would be a god place to head for! We got a taxi there and it didn't take us long to find a tapas restaurant that we all liked the look of. We had a lovely meal of tapas, desserts and sangria, paid for by Kelly as a birthday present to herself and an engagement present for us!

We got a taxi back to the hostel and had a drink in the bar while Kelly made a few phone calls home. We went to bed quite early again as we have another early start tomorrow - 9:30am bus to Rainbow Beach where we will be setting off on our Fraser Island tour the next day!