Australia, Brisbane: Crikey! A Day at Steve Irwin's Zoo

Brisbane, Australia's third largest city, was situated on the east coast north of Sydney, and was where we planned to start our 6-week tour around Oz. We had previously booked ourselves on a Qantas Airlines flight to get from Auckland, New Zealand, to Brisbane; that flight left at 7:10am Auckland time and arrived at 7:40am Brisbane time; the actual flying time took over three hours, though. To leave Auckland, we had to endure a very early start when we were taken to the airport by Scott, the owner of Airport Skyway Lodge, a motel located close to the international airport and where we had stayed on our last night in New Zealand.

As soon as we arrived at Brisbane International Airport, we purchased a Vodafone prepaid mobile SIM card for the mobile phone we have been using on the trip this year. We also exchanged the remainder of our New Zealand Dollars for Australian Dollars, and then withdrew more cash from an ATM so we would have some when we made our way to the city. To get to Aussie Way Hostel, the hostel where we had booked a room for a couple of nights, we caught a shuttle bus that dropped us right at the front door of 34 Cricket Street in the city centre.

The trees in South Bank's parks were full of the creatures at night and that they emitted a very creepy noise whilst hanging upside down from branches

To save some money, we had booked a couple of dormitory room beds instead of a private room. Paying $12 AUD each (around £5.50, or $11 USD each) for the shuttle from the airport was not bad going since we were taken straight to the hostel, and when we forked over $25 AUD each (around £11, or $22 USD each) per night for the dorm beds, we felt that we had gotten off to a decent start with our quickly decreasing travel fund that was sure to run out before the end of the year was up. By the way, we had set our daily accommodation budget at £10 each (that's $20 USD, or $22.50 AUD), which was a lower figure than we ended up paying most nights; at the end of the year, though, we had planned to visit and stay with friends in Melbourne and Sydney, thus avoiding having to pay for accommodation on our nights in those two cities.

Once we checked into the hostel, we ended up spending all of the remaining morning and afternoon sorting out our travel plans and arrangements for the next six weeks. We also had some lunch in the Roma Street rail station, which is where we booked Dan's bus ticket; a mince pie, large spring roll and oven crunchies (those are the same as tater tots for the Americans reading this) filled us up there. Since Kyle was due to fly to the United States a couple of days after arriving in Brisbane to spend a week with his family, we made sure that Dan booked his hop-on, hop-off bus ticket to travel up the east coast, and also figured out where and how Kyle could join him when he returned to Australia.

The reason for Kyle going back to the US was not a happy one; there were a couple of tragedies in his family that had taken place while we were finishing up our time in New Zealand. First, his grandfather (Bob) died a few weeks prior to us arriving in Brisbane, and about a week before he left Brisbane, Kyle's dad and stepmum's house (Leon and Linda's) caught fire and most of it was destroyed, along with many of their dear personal possessions inside. The flight that Kyle booked coincided with the American holiday Thanksgiving and also a surprise 60th birthday party for his mum (Judy); Judy's birthday was one week after Kyle's, whose birthday happened to be on the day we arrived in Australia.

In Brisbane, we wanted to work out how we would be travelling south through the middle portion of the country from Darwin to Alice Springs, and then from Alice Springs to Adelaide. Our initial plan was to take The Ghan, the train servicing the route. However, when we searched for more information on booking the rail journey, the price was very high and we had to think about alternate arrangements, since we were running out of money. Running out of money at that stage in our year-long trip was not surprising since we had already been on the road for 10-1/2 months. To help slow the inevitable approach to a zero bank account balance, we purchased Youth Hostel Association (YHA) cards for around $34 AUD each (£15, or $30 USD), which ended up helping us save a fair amount of money on rooms in hostels, for travel, entrance tickets and tours, and even cinema tickets and cafes.

Dan's former boss, Carl, had been living in Sydney for the past 2-1/2 years and had planned to visit some of the same places we were visiting around the same time as us. We therefore wanted to align our travel plans with his, so we got in touch with him while we were in Brisbane and started thinking up options. One of the things he mentioned to us was that he was going to use his airmiles to fly from Cairns to Darwin and from Darwin to Alice Springs, since his British Airways points worked on Qantas with that airline being part of the same OneWorld Alliance.

With us having many airmiles and holding good statuses on American Airlines (Platinum), another member of the OneWorld Alliance, we decided to look into booking our flights from Darwin to Alice Springs using airmiles; we were able to do so without a problem and also were able to get a refund on the flight that we had already booked and paid for on Qantas to fly from Cairns to Darwin, and then use our airmiles to cover that flight. By doing that, we saved a few hundred Australian Dollars, making us very happy. Finally, we booked a flight from Alice Springs to Adelaide with our airmiles to complete our journey to the southern coast of Australia. There were taxes required for all of the flights, but they equated to very little compared to what the cost of the flights would have been had we not used our airmiles.

After spending hours researching and trying to sort out the flights, we ended up saving around $2000 AUD (£888, or $1776 USD) by using our American Airlines frequent flyer miles on codeshare flights with Qantas. To celebrate the huge savings we had made, and also to celebrate Kyle's birthday (equally as important as saving money, if not more...), we agreed to walk through the city centre and across the large Victoria Bridge, heading to Brisbane's South Bank area so we could check out the strip of restaurants, shops and bars along Grey Street and Stanley Street and find a good place to have dinner for the evening.

Another thing we had done that afternoon was book a trip to Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's zoo) outside Brisbane for the following morning; we decided to keep Kyle's birthday fairly low-key with such an early start the next morning, which is why we decided to go for a meal and to the cinema. At South Bank 5 Cinemas, they had a brilliant meal deal where we could pay $16 AUD each (£7, or $14 USD each) for a film ticket and a meal at one of a list of sixteen restaurants in the area; it was a great way to save money with cinema tickets costing $14 AUD each anyway. A Vietnamese restaurant caught our eye and we ended up eating there; it was called Viet de Lites, a clever name.

The food at Viet de Lites was really tasty and we were served large dishes, which we shared. In addition to a grilled prawn and pork rice noodle salad, we shared stir-fried egg noodles with lemongrass beef and vegetables and a plate of spring rolls. When we had finished eating, we walked back to the cinema to see the film "Across the Universe", a unique musical film set in the 1970s, but we ended up changing our tickets to the following evening because we were too tired to watch a film after a heavy meal and travelling early that morning from New Zealand. Getting back to the area where our hostel was located was easy; we just took a train from the South Brisbane station to the Roma Street station and then walked for ten minutes from there to get to Aussie Way Hostel.

The South Bank area around Stanley Street had many trees and parks. When we were walking across Victoria Bridge from the city centre the night we did the cinema meal deal, it was still daylight, around 5:00pm, and we looked up and behind us to take in the views of Brisbane's skyline. The city skyline was impressive, but more impressive was the enormous bat we saw flying above us, followed by another one.

The large bats were flying low and had very leathery wings that reminded us of Batman. We found out later that they were called flying foxes and were common all along the eastern coast of Australia. We also found out later that the trees in South Bank's parks were full of the creatures at night and that they emitted a very creepy noise whilst hanging upside down from branches. Even though the bats were supposed to be harmless, we still walked with caution around them and thought of the worst vampire movie we had seen to keep the evening exciting.

The next day was absolutely fantastic; we both really loved Australia Zoo and all of the unique animals there. To get to the zoo, which was about an hour from the city centre in a place called Beerwah, we booked a day trip through CC's Croc Connections. Our driver, Mike, was really informative and told us all about the zoo, how it evolved over time from a private reptile park run by Bob and Lyn Irwin (Steve's parents) to the mammoth facility it has become, run by Steve Irwin's wife Terri.

During the journey, Mike played a DVD highlighting Steve Irwin's life and what he and Terri, and his parents, have done over the years for the zoo. He also gave us tips to maximise our time there, including when we could have our photo taken with a koala at a time where we could avoid massive crowds. The DVD was really interesting; we saw many scenes of Steve wrestling with crocodiles and learnt why he did that, and we also saw a bloopers type segment where Steve was attacked by many different animals he was working with, such as pythons - he received some nasty bites!

There were large enclosures in the zoo with kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, Tasmanian devils, echidnas, tigers, elephants, crocodiles, alligators, goannas, monitor lizards, emus, cassowaries, jabirus, snakes, dingoes and many different kinds of exotic and beautiful birds. It was amazing to learn about so many different types of parrots and other brightly-coloured birds that were native to Australia, and of course the unique Australian marsupials. After having our photos taken with a cuddly koala, we walked to the Crocoseum to watch the snake, bird and crocodile show there. The show was very entertaining and we learnt how crocodiles attack their prey, among many other things.

The weather during our trip to the zoo was sunny and hot, and we enjoyed walking around in the sunshine as we made our way through the enclosures. It was necessary to stop a couple of times to take breaks; we were at the zoo for almost six hours in total. For lunch, we ate in the large cafeteria next to the Crocoseum, choosing to share fish and chips, battered sausage and chicken nuggets. Late in the afternoon, we sat down and enjoyed a cold soft drink and quite possibly had another snack, but we're not sure. One thing we are sure of is that Mike stopped on the way back to Brisbane so we could buy some freshly sliced and diced pineapple; that went down a treat for us and the other people on our minibus after a long, hot day at the zoo.

We were dropped off at Aussie Way Hostel when we arrived back in Brisbane. Before going out for the evening, we spent some time packing our things to leave the next day, with Kyle taking a few of Dan's things that he no longer needed so he could leave them in the US or ship them back to England; postage to the UK was much cheaper from the US than it was from Australia. We wanted to pack our things early because there were two girls staying in our 4-person dorm room and we didn't want to disturb them when we returned later that night. Once we were packed and ready to go, we headed back to Brisbane's South Bank area, but this time we took a train there instead of walking the whole way.

Before seeing "Across the Universe", we shared a large chicken burger (that's the same as a chicken sandwich for the Americans reading this) at a local cafe near the cinema. We also had time to relax in a bar near the cinema before the film, but we just had soft drinks there. The place was trendy and open-air, so was a nice place to sit for a while before seeing the film.

The film was good, but a little strange and hard to follow at times. In the end, we agreed it was quite thought-provoking and we liked the way music, such as Beatles' songs, was linked to the stories in the film. Getting back to the hostel was not as easy that evening; we sprinted to the South Brisbane rail station and only barely caught the last train to Roma Street. It was good that we caught the train to avoid having to walk 45 minutes or so back to the hostel, or paying for an expensive taxi journey.

The next morning, Kyle had to leave early to go to the airport and start his 26-hour journey to Arkansas, via Los Angeles and then Dallas. He was picked up on the same airport shuttle that we had taken from the airport a couple of mornings earlier, but this time he had to change buses at Roma Street station. After Kyle left, Dan checked out of Aussie Way Hostel and made his way to Roma Street station to check in for his bus journey later to Noosa, the first place he would visit on his own during 2007, but a supposed nice place on the beach to visit.

The bus company Dan used - Premier Motor Services - allowed him to check his bag early, which gave him the opportunity to walk around the city centre again and to visit Brisbane's botanical gardens. With a few days on the beach looming, he bought some sunscreen and decided to purchase some more deodorant since he was almost out. The Brisbane Museum at City Hall was open that morning and he tried to go inside, but there were a lot of homeless people lying on the floor of the lobby, and on seats and tables everywhere, where he entered, and he couldn't actually find the museum section of the building; the Red Cross was doing some charity thing or another and Dan didn't want to get in the way, so he gave up and headed to the botanical gardens instead.

The gardens were very large and beautiful and he took a lot of photos before making his way back over to South Bank via the Goodwill footbridge. There, he walked along the promenade and took in nice views of the city skyline and river by day. As the departure time for his bus was getting nearer, he headed back to Roma Street station to catch his afternoon ride to Noosa. For lunch, he bought a cheese and ham sandwich from 7-Eleven as soon as he crossed back over the footbridge. The Premier Motor Services bus was nice and air-conditioned, like any other large tourist bus, and the journey took a few hours.