Australia 2024 - Day 16

Day 16 - July 13  Crikey! It's Australia Zoo

The plan of attack for today was to visit Australia Zoo - owned and operated by the Irwin family of Steve Irwin fame (no we didn't get to see any of the family).

Grandpa, the kids and I headed out with plans to meet up with the Stopic's when they arrived (Atti and Eddie had arrived late the night before after we had gone back to Uncle Bills place).  There was quite a line up when we got there, but thankfully it didn't take too long to get in.  We wandered around some of the closer exhibits (the pink areas) until we found the common wombat - who for once were out and about walking around their enclosure. 

We spent quite a bit of time watching them, and waiting for the Stopics (who by now had arrived and were in line to get in).  They caught up with us and we headed into the Reptile house - once again I was really excited to actually see someone up and moving - in this case the Fierce snake.  In this case I was really glad for that piece of glass...

We wandered through the aviary and into the Kangaroo enclosure where we were able to get up close and personal with some Eastern Greys.

The Koala's were not quite as approachable - they were all taking naps - of course!

The Cassowary tried to attack (though of course never on camera) and I was again glad for the big fence between us - those guys are vicious.

The jabiru was very impressive, that is one big bird!

But the quokkas were a bit disappointing.  Oh well just means we need to do a trip to Western Australia to see them in their native habitat.

By this stage it was lunch time, so we stopped into the back of the Crocaseum for some seriously expensive burgers.

Then had just enough time to see some crocodiles.

And a very relaxed Tasmanian Devil (where is his whirlwind!)

Before it was time for the Croc Show.  

The show was both good and bad.  The bad was the starting bit where they were trying to hype up the crowd - just get on with it already.  The fly overs by some of the birds were OK, but none of them came over our section.  But the Croc himself - Charlie was pretty cool.  He was certainly a big guy.

Once the show was over we jumped on the shuttle bus to take us down to the other end of the park - We saw the Elephants and tried to see the tiger show, but the tiger was not cooperating and refused to come out and play - so we continued onto Lemur island.  Those guys are always so cute.  It was here that we finally go to see an Echidna - we had been past two other Echidna enclosures this morning but they were all empty so I was glad to finally see Prickle!

We ended the day with a walk down through the African exhibit, but were a but underwhelmed - the white rhinos were off in a back corner and they were the guys I really wanted to see.  Grandpa had already taken himself  back to the main entrance as his ankle was getting sore and he didn't want to do much walking, so we headed for the shuttle stop and caught the bus back to the entrance where we had Ice creams and did some souvenir shopping before heading back to Uncle Bills.

The Stopic's met us back at Uncle Bills and we had a dinner of lasagna, pizza and garlic bread.