Australia Zoo

Check that zoo out! Crikey!

Australia Zoo was started by Australia's famous wildlife daredevil, Steve Irwin. We spent the day there on the way from Mooloolaba to Brisbane.

As far as zoos go, it's a nice one. All the enclosures are really large and clean. The focus is clearly on australian animals, so I suppose this zoo is more targeted at tourists than it is at aussies themselves.

There are many crocodiles here. A few are from Florida, but most are either salties or freshwater crocs.

Of course there are many koalas here. They're very cuddly-looking, yet we got to pet one and their fur is actually kind of rough.

And then sometimes they get mad and very vocal:

Throughout the day we saw many waterdragons that are just roaming free, posing for visitors to take pictures.

Here's the famous tasmanian devil. They sure are active buggers, running around their enclosure like cartoon characters.

Weird bird which name we can't remember.

We watched the otter feeding. They're amazingly quick and swim as well as they can run.

The cassowary is important in conserving rainforest: some of the tree seeds need to be digested by it before they can germinate. This cassowary produced a weird deep vibration as we were walking around, it took us a minute to realise it was responsible for it.

Australia is strangely the country with the largest population of wild camels. Camels were brought over by settlers, in particular Afghan settlers, who established routes and railways through the desert.

The camel is actually quite similar to the cow: it's got several stomachs and chews its cud.

An important attraction of Australia Zoo is the crocodile show. After a beautiful bird show, they bring in a crocodile under water, then trick it into attacking, then take it back. Altogether kind of boring, the birds ended up being the nicest part of the show.