Day 30, July 26 - Australia Zoo

Steve Irwin Way - the highway to the Australia Zoo
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The whole family woke up at 8:00am happy to see that it was finally a warm and sunny day. We left the campground at 9:30am and drove to the Britz depot near the Brisbane airport as we had a few minor things that needed fixing on the campervan. There were some things that were missing that we had with our previous campervan like shelving in the fridge, curtains on the door, etc., just minor inconveniences. We thought we would go and pick them up since we didn’t have to go out of our way to get there because it was on our way out of Brisbane. They were quick helping us out and we were back on the road by 10:15am for the drive to Beerwah and the Australia Zoo, the home of the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. We arrived at the zoo at 11:00am and spent the entire day there walking around, leaving at the 5:00pm closing time. The zoo was in immaculate condition…very clean and impressive looking, but the variety of animals was quite limited (primarily focused on Australian animals). They are currently working on expanding the zoo from 73 acres to over 300 acres. Much of the zoo was focused on kangaroos (once again we spent a great deal of time feeding them), koalas and especially crocodiles and Steve Irwin. There were quite a few crocodiles, all of them with a story of how Steve rescued them. We watched a few demonstrations of the crocodile trainer feeding the crocs by hand like Steve used to do which was really cool. One of the shows was in the famous Crocoseum that we’ve seen on TV before. When the kids were playing at one of the zoo playgrounds Bindi Irwin was also there, with a bodyguard in tow, playing with her friends. Bindi is the Crocodile Hunter’s 10 year old daughter and is an industry all her own with TV shows, CD/DVD’s, merchandising, a clothing line, etc. Someone asked if they could get their picture taken with her and the bodyguard stepped in and said to leave her alone because it was her play time. All in all, it was a really nice zoo. We’ve certainly had our fill of zoos and wildlife parks in the last few weeks and would probably have skipped it today if it wasn’t one of the most famous zoos in the world.

Australia Zoo
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We left the zoo and drove to the Sunshine Coast where we would be staying the night. After getting lost driving around Maroochydore looking for our campground for about half an hour, we arrived at the Maroochy River Cabin Village & Caravan Park just after dark at 6:00pm. The campground was probably the crappiest campground we’ve been to thus far. It was difficult booking a campground in this area because all of the resort campgrounds have a three night stay minimum. It wasn’t a very exciting night and we just cooked dinner, watched movies and played games in the campervan until bedtime at 9:00pm.