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When we got up in the morning we made a quick bowl of oats. Our Irish friends advised us to check with the local tourist lady in the morning to get a 10% off coupon. We were all over that. Another interesting thing about our trip is the amount of brochures and junk that we have acquire. Every time you stop into one of these travel places you mention a noun and you get a handful of brochures about whatever you said. If it wasn’t for Kelly’s constant cleanup of these brochures I’m sure we would have easily a box full. So we tried to just get off with the coupon, which was in a book, but we mistaking told them something about “Queensland” and soon a few dozen maps, brochures and pamphlets made their way into our hands. After a quick stop to the rubbish, we headed out on “Steve Irwin” road.

The Australia Zoo is the Zoo that Steve Irwin took over from his parents in the early nineties. It wasn’t much then but it is quite the sight now. It’s a little bit out of the way of most of the other attractions of the coast, but its remoteness makes it feel more like a step into wildlife instead of zoo. The first thing we saw when we got there was a camel chillen but the front gate. The thing with this zoo that you could tell about it was that there is a clear intent for the people to be able to interact with all the animals. There would be some wild animals like turkey’s, lizards, birds just wandering around in the park. For other animals it meant having “shows” to be able to see / touch animals that couldn’t be safely handled, (Either bad for the animal or human) like a crocodile or koala. However, in some of these shows it seemed that Steve was the missing element. It wouldn’t be possible to replace his enthusiasm or joy to share his love of animals with others.

Perhaps the best interaction at the park is the “Kangaroo Heaven” where guests actually are able to hang out with a few dozen kangaroos without any obvious supervision. These kangaroos are totally fine with a five year old walking up to it and feeding it. They did not seem to be afraid of people at all. It made for some really fun pictures. It was probably our favorite part of the whole experience at the zoo.

We hopped back in our little disaster car and hit the road. By this point in our trip we have become familiar with a few more of our cars less noticeable features. One example is the “are you sure you wanna get out?” safety feature of the driver door. Often you will pull the handle and give a little shove and nothing happens. You must first as yourself “Do I really wanna get out?” If you do you must slam yourself against the door and you are on your way.

With the zoos mascot

With one of the many Kangaroos we got to touch and feed… CRIKEY it was awesome!!

This was in the Stadium at the Zoo where they had Steve Irwins big Memorial service on TV

Kelly next to a Tiger

Part of the Steve Irwin Memorial where tons of people signed these shirts

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 9:02 am and is filed under Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.