Crikey - Day 31

Got up at a reasonable time, had breakfast and then drove up towards the Sunshine Coast, this time in glorious weather. We stopped near Mount Mee to get a good look at the Glass House Mountains. After 10 minutes in the sun we hopped back in the car and drove to Beerwah and the world famous Australia Zoo. It's expanded hugely since I last visited about 20 years ago, the price has also expanded but in reality it's probably not much more expensive than a day a Paignton Zoo and you can bring in your own food and drink and make a whole day of it. As it was we probably spent the best part of 5 hours wandering around and saw two thirds of the zoo. We decided to give the Asia/Africa section a miss and stick to the Aussie animals as those are the ones that Adrian's not really seen close to before. Within 15 minutes of arrival an opportunity to get close to a koala presented itself, so I pushed Adrian forward passed the ever arriving families so he got his turn before too many interlopers. We saw the Show in the Crocoseum, which had an awesome display of birds but was less croctastic than I remembered and then headed for some lunch. As expensive as you'd expect from a Zoo/theme park but tasty none the less. After lunch we headed to Roo Heaven and the Wetland area to get up close and personal with Roos, wallaby, Brolgas, Jabiru and Emu before walking through trees full of stoned koalas and some wombats and a sleeping Tazzie Devil. We also managed to spot all the snakes in the viperium even the Death Adder who'd managed to show off his camouflage skills by burying himself in the sand. After checking out the pro photo of Adrian getting up close and personal with a keeper and koala we exited through the ubiquitous gift shop. Despite temptation I avoided buying anything for a change!

Rather than check out the animal hospital we decided to jump back in the car and drive to the coast, it was getting late so rather than get out we did a drive by of Noosa and Coolum beaches and drove back down the Sunshine and Bruce Highways getting home around 7pm. We walked about 6km and my quads were starting to complain about getting in an out of the water up huge steps with a tank strapped to my back the previous day, so after a tea of tacos and fajitas, I fell into bed at around 9pm again.