Travelling Post 48 - Crickey it's a Croc

From Fraser Island I continued my journey southward to Noosa Heads. Noosa is a small town, which looks, and is expensive. The reason for heading there was to visit Australia Zoo, that institution formally owned by the late great Steve Irwin, for as a backpacker many other reasons to visit Noosa Heads are too costly.

As zoos go, Australia Zoo isn't huge, the number of animals caged there are fewer than cheaper but larger zoos such as Toronga in Sydney. The comparably few animals isn't a criticism, the animals here are among the most well kept I have ever seen with the animal accommodation more spacious than pretty much any I've ever seen before. What is a criticism is the price, it certainly hurt the wallet.

I visited the zoo with a few friends I'd met on the Fraser Island trip and upon entering the zoo our first sight was a talk on Galapagos Tortoises, they were huge. It struck me immediately how much the zoo keepers cared for the animals. Our next stop was the elephant feeding, where members of the public, including myself, queued up and offered to get our hands all slimy. We saw elephants later on as well, this time they were playing ball with the zoo keepers - the life of an incarcerated animal seems easy.

The main attraction of the Zoo is the Crocoseum, a 5,000 capacity arena where the zoo keepers bring in animals for all to view and learn about. The show was a bit of an anti climax, whilst still entertaining it was very Americanised with overly enthusiastic presenters and poor, poor jokes. The highlight of the show is the crocodile feeding, but having seen this in the wild all that was in it for me was learning a bit more about these ferocious killing machine.

All in all it was a good day, but Australia Zoo is still just a zoo and having seen a fair few in Oz already and seeing many animals in the wild it wasn't worth the entry fee.