A few weeks ago, I took a train from Brisbane then a bus to Beerwah, a little town several hours away. It’s the home of the Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter, which is Beerwah's biggest claim to fame. The Zoo was expensive but well worth it. There are crocodiles, alligators, snakes, otters, elephants, tigers, a wetlands section, tropical birds, and of course, koalas and kangaroos that have open exhibits so one can walk through and pet them. Really neat. I even went to a croc show in the Animal Planet Crocaseum.
There are huge pictures of Steve Irwin everywhere. Mostly pictures holding one animal or reptile or another. His videos are playing all over the place and pictures of his wife and kids are everywhere too. It’s a very Irwin family place. It made me a little bit sad that he is gone, even though my only relationship to him was via television.
My supervisor at Kingfisher worked with Steve for several years when she worked at his zoo. She told me he was exactly the same person off camera as on. Passionate about what he was doing and loved his family dearly.
In my opinion, the coolest part of the Zoo were the kangaroo pens. There were 2, one for grey kangaroos and another for red kangaroos. Walk though a fence gate, make sure to close it, and there are a dozen or more kangaroos just hopping around their enclosure. Not only was I able to walk up to them, but pet and take pictures with them too. So cool. I had no idea kangaroos were so soft! They are shorter than I thought they'd be too.
The koalas were similar, walk through their enclosure and pet the ones in the lower trees that have a sign that says "you can pet me." Picking them up was not allowed but it was still really cool to see one close up and touch it. Koalas were my favorite animal as a child.
The crocs were huge and as much as I'd like to see them in the wild, I will be content regardless of whether or not I actually will. They have a lot of teeth and when the guy presenting the croc show is obviously nervous about dealing with one and that's his job, probably it'd be better for me to avoid them entirely.
Among the other creatures to give me goosebumps, the snakes. There were a lot of them and mostly they were venemous. Including the fierce snake that can kill a lot of people with one bite. I took a picture of that one and hope to NEVER see one outside that zoo. Really very creepy but then I'm not much of a snake person to begin with.
The zoo was great and I recommend it to anyone who is not Australian because the animals are so completely different from any at home or elsewhere. Check out the pics I posted.
