After Fraser Island we left Hervey Bay and travelled the short journey to Rainbow Beach. This was a compulsory overnight stop with the oz bus. Most people do Fraser Island from either Hervey Bay or Rainbow Beach, we're glad we did it from Hervey as there is nothing to do in Rainbow. It's a nice little town, but very sleepy and everything shuts at 8!

From Rainbow we went on to Noosa. Noosa is apparently the retirement home for the people of Sydney and Melbourne. It's a really nice place but is quit posh and expensive. Our hostel was a bit too far out to actually allow us to see the main part of Noosa so we went to one of the 'suburbs'. It still had plenty to see and do and wasn't as expensive as the main part of Noosa. We did not have much time in Noosa to do things so we just looked around the shops and went to the cinema. Had an nice lunch though hehe!

The next day we left the hostel early to catch the Australia zoo bus. It's about an hour or so journey to the zoo and the bus is free which is really cool! Whilst we were on the bus we watched a video with Steve Irwin himself. It was quite sad actually and me and Zoe both had a tear in our eye as he was telling the story of how his bestest friend (his dog, Chilli) was accidently shot.

The zoo itself was really good, although it was $49 to get in! It was layed out nice and all the enclosures looked well maintained and comfortable. It had a big food court and of course the Crocusem, which seats 5,000 people. There were about 2,500 people seated when we watched the show. The zoo is really conservation aware and this was the theme throughout the demonstration.

Just before the show got started we had some unexpected visitors - three elephants! They just popped in to say hello! The show involved various snakes that were layed on the floor and left to do what they likedwhilst one of them went for a swim. Then there were birds that flew all around the arena, we had to call for one of them as it was flying from outside the stadium. After this it was time for the crocsto show off. Graham was the croc in the spotlight today. He was very well behaved and managed to leave all members of staff in one piece! The stadium was designed by Steve with clear waters so the audience could see how a croc acts below the water. Th staff coaxed Graham out of the water so we could see him above the water too and they also made him jump for his food. The show was really good and had a good atmosphere with unsuspecting volunteers also taking part.

The zoo has scheduled talks and demonstrations throughout the day. We went to a camel one to learn about the zoo's own camel and camels in general it was quite interesting and solved a few myths such as there are two types of camel -one with two humps which is now very rare and one with one hump which is the common camel. Also camels will only spit at you if its their last resort and its not really spit its actually their digested food from three stomachs and depending on what they've been eating will depend on how hard and powerful it sprays out at you! Apparently the smell lasts for weeks too! Hehehehehe - sorry I couldn't help throwing that in, hope you haven't just eaten your lunch!

We saw lots of different animals including kangaroos, birds, koalas, crocodiles, alligators, dingoes, camels, foxes, snakes, lizards, otters, elephants and my favourite tigers. When we went to Tiger Temple there was a guy in the enclosure with the two tigers. At the zoo they have quite a few tigers and rotate them in order to keep them happy. Whilst we were there they swapped two tigers for a mum, juniors and cubs! The only thing was they were quite hard to see and the sun was too bright to get pictures, but they did feed one of the tigers right in front of us so we did manage to get some close ups!

Unfortunately our day at the zoo came to an end and we had to hop on the bus back to Noosa. It was a really good day and was definitely worth going to.

We ended up eating at a traditional surf club that night. It was really nice, quite posh though but I guess we were still in Noosa. After that we had a quick swing on the swings (as you do at 22)! We left for Brisbane the next day.