Sea World

Well, it was my birthday last week, and I decided that was as good an excuse as any to take a week off and go down to the Gold Coast for a couple of days. I booked a room at the Holiday Inn right at Surfer's Paradise, which was convenient to the beach if not right on it.

I did some swimming on Sunday. The surf on the Gold Coast is somewhat difficult to deal with, and "swimming" largely consists of fighting to stay upright with one's head above the water. I'll certainly say I prefer Noosa for swimming. There is surf if you want to use it (I have taken a liking to some body-surfing) but you can actually get out past where the waves start breaking and still reach the sand with your feet. I've also been told I should check out a couple of places on Moreton Bay, which should be both closer and have very little surf.

Monday, I paid a visit to Sea World. I was a little disappointed that they don't have an Orca, as I've never been to any of the Sea World parks in the US (as many times as I've been to Florida, mind you) and was hoping to see one.

The first exhibit I came across was the dugong exhibit. Dugongs are related to manatees, though they are smaller and have a fluked tail like dolphins and whales rather than the rounded paddle-shaped tail the mantees have.



The main attraction of Sea World are the dolphins. Mostly they have the familiar bottlenose dolphins. The first ones I ran across were in the nursery area, where the mothers and calves stay until the calf is ready to be with the rest of the adult dolphins.


They are all quite inquisitive, and seem to be watching the crowd almost as much as the crowd watches them. They come right up to the edges of the pool and look at you.



The young ones are especially fun to just sit and watch, because they will play games with ANYTHING. A leaf, a stick both become toys for throwing and swimming to retrieve. Sadly, I didn't have any photos left to take while I was watching them at the end of the day.

They also had an Indo-Pacific Humpack Dolphin which I'd never seen before (indeed the only kinds of dolphin I've seen are the bottlenose ones). They have an elongated beak, and have pink markings along with the grey. They also have just a hump on their back instead of a dorsal fin.





They also have a dolphin show, which I caught near the last of my day.






Another interesting attraction they have is called "Shark Bay." Here they have touch pools with starfish, urchins, sea cucumbers and such of various varieties, and even some rays and fish.







I love that last ray. It just looks like a star field on a dark night.

Obviously, they also have sharks in Shark Bay. They have 2 separate enclosures. One is a reef environment and has a lot of fish and reef-dwelling shark species. They had a couple of very large zebra sharks (called zebra due to the stripes they have when young).




The second tank is more like the coastal shelf type of environment. There were a few quite large sharks here. They had a big bull shark as well as a couple of dusky sharks (in order below).



There is also a polar bear exhibit here. Their crazy polar bear was continually doing back flips by launching himself off of the viewing room glass.





That's all for now. Hopefully it won't be so long before my next post.

Eclipse and Riverfire

The past couple weeks have seen a total Lunar eclipse as well as the annual Riverfestival.

The eclipse was last Tuesday night (the 28th) and, sadly I was working. I did get out and get a look at it, but my roommate was able to get some photos on his camera (which, incidentally, is the same as mine). Here's a good one:



The Riverfestival is kicked off with a fireworks show that takes in the entire city. If you look at a map of the city, you'll notice that it's effectively on a peninsula, where the river makes a sharp turn. On the east side of the city, you have the Story Bridge, and around the bend, on the west side, there is the Victoria bridge. The distance from the Story Bridge to the Victoria Bridge is probably 2 kilometers (a bit more than a mile). Here's a map. The bridge in red is the Story Bridge, and the one in blue is the Victoria. The green "x" note where the fireworks barges were positioned. (For reference, I was standing in about the center of the area noted as the Southbank Parklands - nearer the Victoria Bridge.)



The fireworks were preceded by a short demonstration by the RAAF aerobatic team, The Roulettes. They did some rolls and loops and things right over the river. (Clicking on any of the pictures below will open the full resolution file. These are large, so are not recommended for dialup connections.)



Once the fireworks started, the scale of the show quickly became apparent. In addition to the barges, the Victoria and Story Bridges themselves and one of the bridges between (The Goodwill Bridge - the pedestrian bridge which is immediately south of the Victoria which links the Southbank Parklands with the Botanical Garden) as well as about 10 buildings in the city and south of the river were used as platforms. I was very impressed by the scale of the show. Easily, this was the biggest fireworks display I've seen. Here are some shots (if you look in the lower-right corner of som eof these, you can see the fireworks on the other side of the peninsula through the buildings):











The finale of the show is when the RAAF F-111 fighter jets fly overhead doing what they call a "dump and burn." Essentially, what they do here is dump fuel from the aircraft, and light it with their afterburners. The result of this is a huge fireball trailing the aircraft. I got a clean shot of the fireball, but it's not a very close one, so you can't see how large the fireball really is.



If you want to see a closeup, check this link out: OurBrisbane.Com

Also, I found a little video: From www.F-111.net

Australia Zoo

The other cool thing we did while my dad and sister were in town was to visit Australia Zoo. Having been a fan of Steve Irwin for a while, I was really looking forward to visiting the zoo.

The first thing we came to was an enclosure with some birds of prey. They had a wedge-tailed eagle (darker than the one at Lone Pine because it's older) and a blue-winged kookaburra:




That kookaburra is different from the laughing one we saw during the show later in the afternoon. The laughing kookaburra is the one which makes that crazy, laughing call. This is the laughing kookaburra:



The aviary was next, and it contained quite a number of different birds. These two parrots seemed to be racing back and forth down the length of the enclosure:




There were a number of birds which appeared to be doves of some kind. The prettiest ones were these:



There were also quite a number of finches, including this bright red one:



They had a number of lorikeets as well (These are a bit like slightly enlarged parakeets, just in extremely bright colors. In fact, I've had a flock of them in the tree outside across the street when it had fruit. They are LOUD.):



At Australia Zoo, as at Lone Pine, there were are enclosures where you can walk right up to kangaroos and pet them, feed them, or just watch. My sister was quite thrilled to be able to pet them:



This little wallaby was being fed by hand:



They also had koalas to pet.

While walking through the kangaroo enclosures, we ran across this flock of ducks. They are quite pretty, but don't sound anything like ducks. They all sound like ducklings...not a proper quack among them:



We saw tigers:



and elephants:



We also saw one of the strangest mammals on earth, the echidna. This is one of the two kinds of mammals which lay eggs. They look a bit like porcupines:



We also got a close-up look at a cassowary:



and a rather large rhinoceros iguana. This guy is close to six feet long. He's a really large lizard:



We also saw one of the shows at the "Crocoseum." This one featured a number of birds, including some cockatoos:




There was also one large crocodile that was shown off:




That's all for now...