Australia Zoo

Well, it is hard to believe that we have been in Australia for over 3 weeks. Time has flown. The weather is amazing. We are currently moored in the Burnett River in Bundaberg, Queensland. It has two primary industries…fishing and sugar cane production.

Toboggan is surrounded by lots of birds that swoop over the water and dive for fish. Other than pelicans, we have yet to identify any of them. We can hear the occasional kookaburra laugh in the distance. Each night, just as it gets dark, thousands (literally), of bats fly over our boat on their way to their nightly feeding grounds. They are huge fruit bats with 2 foot wing spans. The locals call them “flying foxes”. As they fly through the night sky and are silhouetted against the moon, they look exactly like a Batman movie logo. Spooky!

We could not wait for nature to take its course and hope that we stumbled upon Kangaroos and Koalas and Crocodiles so we cheated and went to the zoo which was 300 miles away. We rented a car and went for a 4 day road trip.

The Australian Zoo was started by the late famous Steve Irwin (The Crocodile Hunter). It has grown into a large and credible zoo which entertained us for a full day.

We saw grey and red kangaroos. The male red kangaroos can jump a 6 foot fence so they ship them off to a grazing land somewhere and only keep the females and the young. We were allowed to pet them and they were really soft. We didn’t see any babies in the pouches.

The koala bears were so cute. They only eat Eucalyptus leaves so someone from the zoo drives 200 miles each day to get fresh Eucalyptus branches to put in their areas. I’m not sure how they get the Koalas out of the old branches to put in the new branches because all the koalas we saw were asleep in the strangest positions in the branches.

The crocodiles were interesting too. They somehow corralled one into the arena where they had the “crocodile show”. They fed them meat and you could see their quick striking reflexes and big teeth. They were treated with great reverence by the zoo keeper. He was definitely not as dramatic as the late Steve Irwin but I think that was a good indication of how dangerous the crocodiles really are. During the “crocodile show” they gave some interesting info on crocodiles which will come in handy next March when we are further north in Australia where crocodiles are a concern. Crocodiles will only strike within 15-20 feet of the waters edge. If you stay that far away from the water, you will be fine. Also, never dangle arms or legs over the side of a dinghy. However, crocodiles have good memories so you are never supposed to land your dinghy in the same place twice. If they saw you land your dinghy in a certain spot one day but were two far away from you to strike, they will actually wait for up to a week in that same spot waiting for you to come back. Spooky!

The dingoes were a beautiful golden red colour. They looked very gentle. They are not usually a problem in the wild as long as people don’t forget that they are wild animals and try to feed them or get too close. Most of the time the dingoes will avoid humans like most wild animals.

The poisonous snake exhibit was interesting too. There are some poisonous snakes around here but mostly more north with the crocodiles. The statistic I found interesting was that 90% of the people bitten by snakes are men. Do you know why? Because they were trying to beat the snake with a stick at the time they were bitten. Clearly women have more sense.

On our way back from the Zoo, we stopped in the Glass House Mountains and did some hiking. The trails were beautiful. One trail we underestimated. It was an advanced trail which eventually turned into rock climbing and we were forced to turned back. It would have been nice to have gone with a group that had proper rock climbing equipment so that we could get to the top. The view was amazing .

After our 4 day road trip, we returned the rental car and resumed our life on the water. For the last couple of weeks, we have just been puttering around the boat and enjoying the Bundaberg area.