Australia Zoo

On Friday we decided to get some tickets to Australia Zoo - made world famous by Steve 'Crocodile Hunter' Irwin. It was about a 2 hour trip from central Brisbane, and we decided to take the cheap option and go by train - our first experience of Aussie trains thus far!

The zoo was in a small town called Beerwah it was reasonably quiet in terms of visitors, but very commercialised and sometimes a little cheesy. In terms of animals however, we were very impressed with the huge collection of native species from snakes to koalas, kangaroos to possums. Of course there was a huge collection of feisty crocs and we visited the famous 'Crocoseum' to view the keepers feeding thew Crocs and other animals...'Crickey!' We were impressed by the layout of the zoo and the quality of the enclosures that had been made for them. At times it felt as thought you were actually walking through the real habitatat of some of the animals, rather than simply a caged enclosure. The zoo seemed keen to educate visitors in environmental conservation too - many of the exhibitions were aimed at educating both kids and adults as to how to live in harmony with the native animals, rather than fear and disturb them.

Our personal favourites of the day were the sleepy Koalas (we are still yet to see any in the wild), and the baby Asian Tiger demonstration in the swimming pool was breathtaking. There were plenty of Australia Zoo keepers milling about, many of them trained by Irwin himself and they all seemed very knowledgable and enthusiatic about the animals on show.

We were pleased to have visited a zoo containing the native animals of Australia rather than a generic zoo containing all the usual suspects from around the world. This gave us a real opportunity to see up close some of the animals that this vast country is famous for.