Day 8 – An Australian Icons Dream As Reality

Today was something even more special than I had prepared myself for. Something that you may have learned about me while reading my blogs is that I have two predominant interests when it comes to what brings me joy. Natural settings like the beach or forest, or animals. As such, I’ve always been interested in visiting Australia Zoo. I grew up watching Crocodile Hunter with my family, so Steve and the Irwin family have always had a nostalgic feel for me. After my trip to the Singapore Zoo in 2019, I learnt that Steve had played a part in the design of the zoo, and I have very happy memories associated with my visit there, which really sparked the interest in visiting the zoo today.

So today we were at the zoo soon after opening. The first thing that made an impression on me was the fact that the area is so heavily forested, giving you the impression (rightly so, honestly) that the zoo property has been carved out in the middle of nowhere, preserving the trees and natural feel. When you walk up to the entrance, you are greeted with the familiar “Crikey” and photos of the legends themselves on the walls, welcoming you in. When you get your tickets and walk through the gates, ahead you see a bronze stature of the Irwins offering a great photo opportunity for the young ones, and people like me who grew up watching them.

We studied the map for a little while and decided that we would catch the shuttle to the back of the park and visit the Africa section, and then walk through the other parts of the zoo on our way back to the entrance. This seemed to be a great idea, since you got to see a general layout of the park on the way through. Africa was the last stop, so we, along with the crowed still remaining on the bus, hopped off and started to explore the area. We headed over to the large African plains area, which housed the zebra, some rhinos and a family of giraffes. They had two younger, smaller giraffes, the smallest of which got “the zoomies” and was adorably running around the spacious enclosure, much to the delight of the visitors around. Up ahead there was a smaller enclosure housing the meerkats, a crowd favourite in our group. It was so easy to stand and watch these little scouts working in their habitat digging for bugs and watching for threats. They’re just too cute!

Next thing on the map was Bindi’s Island. This was an enclosure that was built by Steve as tribute to his daughter which houses their lemur population, giant tortoise and a few smaller exhibits inside the 3 level treehouse in the centre of the island. The lemur population is free roaming here, so you may be lucky enough to walk with these cheeky, loveable creatures. Inside the treehouse, I got to be face to face with a boa constrictor, who was very active in the warmth of the day.

Next up we found ourselves entering the Asia section, and stumbled into the tiger show. Here they were exercising their sumatran tigers and displaying their feats of strength. Something I’ve taken from this is that you will not be safe if these guys are hunting you, a 3 meter vertical leap means that even most trees wont act as a haven for you! But my god are they beautiful animals. If I was left here until the end of the day, I would have been content. Amy at ASAP Adventures – asapadventures.com – was able to capture some gorgeous photos, some of which may be included in this blog. If you want to see more, I would suggest heading over to her page and taking a look around, her travel photography is amazing!

After exploring the Asia section a little more, we headed over to Crikey Cafe for some lunch before the Crocoseum show. The cafe has some amazing views of the park, with one side running the length of the Crocoseum arena, and the other along the Saltwater Croc enclosures. The sheer size of these creatures is hugely intimidating. Once lunch was consumed, we headed over to the arena to find our seats.

The show started with an awesome bird show which had the birds, both native and exotic, fly over the audience, giving in some cases a very close view of their plumage, before returning to their keepers. This part of the show made me very emotional, as they spoke about habitat encroachment by humans and the dangers some of these birds have of becoming endangered soon if we don’t change some of our behaviours.

When the birds returned to their nests, we were very excited to see Robert and Chandler jog out to do the croc show! We were not expecting to get Irwins today since they had been working the school holidays and public holidays. The banter between the brothers-in-laws was fun to watch as they joked alongside feeding and displaying the deadliest Australian reptile. This was probably the highlight of the day.

When the show was over, we hovered by the exit on the lookout for Robert and Chandler, but with no luck we headed over to see the Australian part of the zoo. To get to the Crocoseum, you got to walk through the roo and wallaby exhibit, which was huge, lush and had space enough for the animals to retreat when they had enough of people. Further through, we got to see cassowaries (modern day dinosaurs), dingoes, crocs, tassies and koalas. This trip has really incubated my love for our local furry friends, most of which I would have walked passed in our zoos back home. I’ve really come to appreciate the diversity of our flora and fauna.

Next up was Robert’s Reptile House, another tribute to an Irwin youngster, which housed mostly venomous snakes, some lizards and some frogs. In the centre of the room, there was also a display showing the scale of an anaconda against a tassie devil by comparing the two skeletons of the animals. As someone who has always had a fascination with death, this was very interesting to see. Just out front there was a large enclosure which housed some wombats. We mostly got to see “wombutts”, as they were mostly escaping the afternoon heat in their caves.

Before we left for the day, we headed over to the birds of prey aviary which was scheduled to have a keeper talk at about the same time. We met two lovely bird keepers, which told us all about their wedge tailed eagle, whistling kite and barking owl, and gave us a look into how they train their birds for the shows, and exercise the ones who don’t take part in them also.

Today got me thinking about a few things in my life, and where my passions lie. So now, I’m going to explore the careers page on the Australia Zoo’s website…