Noosa - 6th October

NoosaCar Kilometres: 182,048

Distance Travelled: 365km

Total Distance Travelled: 13,797km

We manage to contain our excitement at our impending visit to Australia Zoo just enough to stop in at Maryborough on the way to Noosa.

Maryborough was the birth place of PL Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, and as well as having plenty of Poppins-themed attractions (which we decide to skip), it is also home to the National Trust classified Brendan and Geraghty's Store.This is one of my special requests, and at $5.50 a ticket, Dave is happy to oblige me.

The shop was run for 101 years as a general store until the mid 1970's, and is amazingly still full of most of it's old and leftover stock.The owner's daughter who inherited it sold off most of the food and other items that were saleable, but left behind hundreds and hundreds of pristine packages of olden-days goods, all painstakingly logged and removed by the National Trust when they bought it in the 90's, so that they could repair the flooring, before reinstating the lot and opening it up as a museum five years or so ago.It's staffed by two volunteers, both of whom are a fountain of information, and obviously have a great personal passion for tracing the history of the store - Messrs. Brendan and Geraghty also made and sold booze, let out several properties, and generally made themselves the focal point of the town, so there were a lot of historical strands to follow, should one be so inclined.It's a bit like one of the shops in the Black Country Museum, only without people in daft costumes to make it 'convincing'.

Driving on to Noosa, we pitch up and head out for a drink on the seafront, and then wander over to watch the kite surfers making the most of a stiff breeze that's been blowing all day.

The following morning we bounce out of bed, as it's Australia Zoo day.We drive the 75kms south to the zoo, and easily find a parking space - it's busy, but most people have New South Wales number plates, as Queensland's kids have now thankfully gone back to school and we're not too far from the border of the two states - NSW have another week to go (although we plan to sit it out in Brisbane).

The zoo is beautiful - it doesn't really contain anything we haven't seen before in other zoos, but it's so well laid out, and the animals have such cleverly spaced habitats that we're very impressed.There are Steve Irwin pictures everywhere - one on each animal's description, as well as a bronze statue of the Irwin family, and a long row of khaki shirts lined up outside the Crocoseum, each with hundreds of messages of remembrance written on them.I'm surprised to find that I feel a bit emotional about it all - there are poignant reminders of Steve's passion in his work at every turn.

We aren't lucky enough to meet any of the Irwin family today though, as we find out that Bindi is filming a documentary in the Antarctic.Still, we head to the Crocoseum for the 2pm show, wondering what we're getting ourselves into.The answer is an hour of pure cheesy entertainment, with plenty of audience participation and over-acting from the enthusiastic team of zoo keepers, who corral flocks of birds, a swimming snake and a very large crocodile called Graham into joining in their antics.We really enjoy the show, and spend the rest of the afternoon seeing the bits we've missed, ending the day with a quiet half an hour feeding the roos with special food as the zoo empties out.

We've had a great day, and drive back to Noosa chattering together about all of the animals we've seen. We even decide to splash out on a pizza for tea from Eagle Boys, as it's $5 special night, and share a large pepperoni on the waterfront in the Falcon before crashing out for the night back at camp.