Australia: Australia Zoo (Part 1)

It's been a superb first few days in Australia. You gotta believe me that this is the first time that I actually go for a vacation since I've started working (and that is already 6 years!)... :P. The other trips are either mission trips or business trips. So rather than rushing to go to all the "touristry" spots, I just selected where I would want to go and sometimes decide just to bum around at home (like today... so that's why I'm blogging!). This is my idea of a good holiday... enough rest, enough jalan-jalan, and enough food of course!...

Personally I would always prefer to go for "nature", scenic places and to some extent "heritage" stuff when I visit new places... dun really fancy man-made achievements (unless it's some real good food... :P)... haha

Anyway on the first weekend I was here, we decided to go to the Australia Zoo (a.k.a. The Steve Irwin Zoo). It was one of the best zoo's that I've been and according to my sis this is the best zoo in Australia (believe me when she says that!... she's been to zoos in Sydney and Melbourne...), Anyway I'll juz write about the animals that are pretty much endemic to the Oceania and particularly Australian region...

Entrance to the Australia Zoo!

We arrived there pretty much early on the Saturday morning, we did pack Leanne's bicycle but they disallowed it... tickets were expensive, it's AUD52! which translates about RM150!! anyway David had a 25% discount on the tickets.... and after that... food first of course!

The first Pit Stop

Finding our way... you can see... Shannon plotting the routes!

As zoos' are pretty common worldwide I will just add pics of animals that are particularly native to Australia... first up is the cassowary... just a little trivia... in 2004 it's listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the World's Most Dangerous Bird!... They actually can lash out with their legs which could could be fatal to an adult human...

The infamous cassowary... whatcha lookin at!

The cute-but-not-so- little-wombats... TRIVIA: it takes them 14 days to digest their food! now i know what I would look like if it takes me 14 days to digest my food too!

The-super-slow-metabolism-rate wombats...

Next is a close cousin to the cassawory.... it's the emu and it can run up to 50km/h!...

The short-legs-but-can-run-faster-than-me Emu

Supposedly this is a dingo... I can't tell it apart from a dog!... made famous in the movie A Cry In The Dark which was shown on RTM since a decade ago and I think it's still being repeated once in a while...

It's a TYPE of dog... nuff said

The kangaroo is the icon of Australia.Iin Australia Zoo, it's allowed to roam free, visitors are free to approach it to pet it, feed it, take pics... and they actually have a space within the enclosure where they can move within it and visitors are not allowed to approach through that space...

The-"visitor"-taking-a-cheap-shot-without-feeding kangaroo

The small little echidna... and this is something interesting that I've found out... Platypus is not the only mammal that lays eggs... please welcome the echidna! and another interesting fact... the male echidna penis has 4 heads!... haha

The I-got-more-"heads"-than-you echidna

This is pretty much the Tasmanian Devil made famous by Warner Bros.

The I-look-better-than-my-cartoon-character Tasmanian Devil

Last but not least, the famous koala bears! Wonder which one is the Koala Bear? Haha...

Till my next update... as the late Steve Irwin use to say... woooohoooooooooooooo!