Sunday, June 10, 2007

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...

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Fraser Island

I was lucky this past week, to have my dad and sister come down and visit me. It was really nice to see them. They got here last Thursday, and I took them downtown on Friday and showed them around a bit. Saturday, my boss had a nice barbeque at his new condo. Sunday, I took them up to Noosa, but it rained, so we wound up just going to the mall for a while and just hanging around the house.

Monday, we took a day tour to Fraser Island. This was something I'd wanted to do since I got here, but saved it for when I had people down from back home. We met the tour at 6:45am. It turned out that we were the only 3 booked for the day, so it was just 4 of us in the Land Cruiser. This was much more enjoyable this way, rather than the 6 or7 people they may have tried to get into the truck had there been more people booked.

After about 2 hours of driving north (about 30 minutes further than Noosa), we got on a ferry to cross over to the island. These ferries just pick up vehicles right off of the beach:



They only allow you on the island if you have 4-wheel drive, and that's due to the fact that there are no paved roads except right at the resorts. The rest of the time it's soft sand and beach driving. Luckily, when the tide isn't up, you can cruise down the beach pretty comfortably, and at pretty high speed. 80 Kilometers per hour is a pretty decent clip.



Fraser is the largest sand island on earth. There are some pretty large hills, and lots of forest:



The main beach here is 75 miles long - hence the name "75-Mile Beach." All along the length of it, there are springs that come up from the water table and pour right down to the ocean:



After driving up the beach for about five or ten minutes, we came across one of the more popular residents of the island:




The dingoes here are wild, but they are quite inquisitive. There are stiff penalties for feeding the dingoes, and they've been known to be less than pleasant, so, we just stayed in the truck and watched. She came right up to us though.

All over the island are giant satinay trees. These are the largest trees I've ever seen. They're not redwood size, but they are still quite huge:




There are also staghorn ferns which grow all over the place, just right on the trunks of trees. Here's a close shot:



Here's a wider shot so you can see how many there are:



Fraser Island also has the only rain forest which grows completely in sand. We stopped at a place where there's a boardwalk following a creek. The water in the creek is so clear that it's difficult even to make it out:



Also growing in the creek are giant angiopteris ferns. These ferns have the largest fronds of any other. These fronds can be over six meters long. The ferns are very closely related to ferns which existed millions of years ago.



After walking through the rain forest, we drove over to Lake McKenzie. This is one of the larger lakes on the island, and it is spectacular. The sand is pure white silica sand and the water is just crystal blue. The water is so pure here that the lake supports virtually no life at all:



The water was freezing, but I managed to work myself up to take a dip for a few minutes.

After the dip in the lake, we began making our way back home. On the way, though, we took a different route and actually drove on the beach on the mainland for close to an hour. This took us across Rainbow Beach. I wish I had been able to see it during the morning or early afternoon so that the sun would have been lighting the cliff faces more, but, as it was, I got some good photos. The reason this beach is named as it is is due to the multi-coloured sand cliffs that run right to the water:




Once we were done driving on the beach, we had to take a ferry over the Noosa river. I don't have any photos, because I couldn't get a good angle, but this ferry was powered by winches and cables strung right across the river.

We also took a pit stop to see some wild kangaroos. I was quite surprised at how close they would let us get to them:



Next post: Australia Zoo!