Little Homies of the Australia Zoo

Oz Zoo

Maya, Tim, and I spent a rainy day at the Australia Zoo, the Irwin family's labor of love. Steve had just recently died, and while a subtle sadness sat upon the grounds, the staff remained strong in their capacity to carry out the everyday functions of the zoo. The show must go on, as they say. A touching memorial had sprung up at the entrance to the zoo, in commemoration of, and as a show of love for, Steve Irwin.

The Australia Zoo is a testament to the depth and breadth of Steve's love for all animals, a love carried forward now by his family. It's the finest zoo I've ever been to.

So many different critters call the zoo home. We wandered the grounds, taking in the exhibits and inspecting the idiosyncracies of critters great and small...

...some native only to Australia...

Jabarus:


Wombats:


Koalas:


Emus:


Cassowaries:


Kookaburras:


Kangaroos:


Australia is home to the Top 10 Most Poisonous Creatures in the World. Here is but one of them:


We stopped into the Crocoseum (yes, it's actually called that)

to watch a bird show:

and a crocodile feeding:


We checked out the Cheetahs,

who turned out to be just big softies:


At one point we were chased by an irate duck. Was it cognizant of the fact that I had enjoyed Duck L'Orange the previous night? Hard to say.


It was a day well spent. Steve sure had a soft spot for animals, and the world sure had a soft spot for him. I can only hope he's off wrestling ever-bigger and wilder crocs in a The Great Big Outback in The Sky...

The Farm

Driving on The Beach Is Fun

Noosa Blue Skies

We've been spending a good deal of time in Noosa, Catherine's current home town. Her father, Phillip, owns a resort here, called Noosa Blue, where she's the General Manager. It would be an understatement to say that the resort is a luxurious spot to stay a while. The decor is modern, the aesthetic and feel are light and airy, the pool is warm, the drinks are cold, and the beach is a mere hop, a short skip, and a soft jump down the road.
Noosa itself reminds me a lot of Santa Cruz, save for the fact that the ocean is about 10 degrees warmer, shimmering in all of its teal glory. The town is much smaller, and not nearly as bustling as Santa Cruz, but it's got some of the same sort of feel, what with its cute little esplenade areas, very similar vegetation and weather, and pristine beaches.

We've been making good use of the beaches, "lying out", bodysurfing, and praying to Neptune for more and bigger waves. All in all, our stay thus far has been very comfortable and quite breathtaking, and I'm finding that I could spend a lifetime on the Australian coast.

Fraser Island

Tim took a lot of fotos of me taking a lot of fotos on Fraser Island. These are my favorites.

Fraser Island, Day 2

The next day we headed back out to Eurong and down the beach, driving south to pick up the ferry back to the mainland. A couple of times we stopped and farted around, taking pictures and the like.

Once off the island we drove past Rainbow Beach, where the sand blends in hues of red, orange, yellow, and every mix between. We stopped to have a look at the Cherry Venture, the aging skeleton of the ship (wrecked) buried in the sand.


We took another ferry into Noosa, and got a good five minute carwash. Not sure if I mentioned it yet or not, but driving on the beach is fun...

Fraser Island, Day 1

We spent the last couple of days up on Fraser Island, up off the coast a short drive from Noosa. We barely made it onto the island in the first place. We were jamming up there Tuesday afternoon, and the odds of us making the last ferry were looking very slim. So Catherine called ahead, threw on her best phone voice, and finally the lady at the other end said they'd hold the ferry five minutes for us. (Gawd, Dido is the all-time favorite singer in Aus). Well, five minutes had passed, and nearly ten, but Tim was still cruising at upwards of 150 kms/h to get us there, all of us holding on for dear life. We made it. Beautiful.

So we get out to the island, find our rooms (Catherine's been giving us the grand tour of Queensland's 5 star resorts), take a swim, have some drinks by the pool, stuff ourselves with wonderful food at the restaurant, and pass out for a good 12 hours.

The next morning we headed out in our rig for a tour of the island. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world. So, imagine if you will, if someone took a sand dune and a jungle, mixed the two well, and splattered the resulting mixture on a large canvas. That's Fraser Island. The roads are all sand tracks, in varying degrees of dryness, and are one way for the most part. When you come upon a vehicle coming at you, one or the other finds a sandy pullout so the other can pass. The whole island is a park, so the vegetation is largely undisturbed. We found Hoop Pines, Paperbarks, Scribbly Barks, all sorts of trees totally new to us.

We went first to a beautiful lake called Lake McKenzie, which has the whitest sand imaginable, and has two shades of blue, one light and one very dark and deep.

I dove in, opened my eyes, and found myself at the edge of a steep drop into the darkest blue I've seen that could still be called blue. As I was swimming alone, I couldn't help but be freaked out by this, so I got back out onto the safe, visible white sand.

We left the crowd at McKenzie and headed for another lake, called Birrameen.

There were only a few folks there when we got there. We walked around through the plentiful reeds in the warm shallows for a bit, then decided it was time to head out to the coast and up the beach for lunch.

Eurong is a small town on the beach, and consists of a petrol station, a bakery, and a hotel. This was the sight that greeted us when we got there:

As described, the island is wholly sand, so the only way one can hope to get anywhere is in a 4 x 4.
We got some caffeine pumping in our blood, and headed down the road and straight onto the beach.

We went up to Happy Valley for lunch, and had to turn around directly afterward in order to get down the beach to a road that would take us back to the resort before high tide rendered the beach impassable.