Dingos, goannas, wombats and lakes!

But before all that, we didn’t even tell you about the Australia Zoo yet! Mike and Candy were amazing hosts (as previously mentioned) and they let us stay and extra night and borrow their car to get up to the Australia Zoo (which is only an hour away, but a bit of a pain to get to without a car). So, we headed out (I drove, Mike is saving himself for the Great Ocean Road), I have to say, I think I was a champion driver (to be fair, we had a GPS, although Mike did manage to convince me to go the wrong way once..) The Australia Zoo is where Steve Irwin lived and worked until his death in 2006. The zoo has a really interesting way of memorializing him, his face (and his family’s) are EVERYWHERE and the message is generally, Steve loved animals and nature, he is gone, so on his behalf, you should too. It’s a pretty effective message.


Anyway, they have a great range of animals, and a few fun shows, overall it was a great day. Highlights: we went to the Crocoseum (like the coliseum) and saw their big show where they let birds fly all around and feed a croc! Super fun. Before the show, the warm up guy made everyone pretend to be their favorite animal, and he would give a prize… that’s right, Mike and I are big winners! We both pretended to be koalas (curled up sleeping on trees, and we didn’t even discuss beforehand!) We are now the proud owners of a picture of Steve Irwin feeding a croc. Crikey!

After the show we headed over to the Elephant area where you get to FEED THE ELEPHANTS!! It was so fun, and you can get in line a million times so I fed an elephant named Bimbo, and one named Siam and they were amazing. We headed through some more kangaroos and koalas (because who can get enough of kangaroo petting?) and in the koala area saw the cutest little joey, Portia, her mom is Ellen (haha, get it?) and she was ADORABLE. Then we were going to leave the zoo and went by to check out the wombats, and they were TAKING A WOMBAT ON A WALK! So we got to pet it! You can pet a wombat (anywhere on their backside) because apparently, when a wombat wants to go somewhere, they want to go fast.

On to Fraser Island! We took a 2 day, one-night tour. Fraser Island is the 4th largest island off of Australia, and I think the only habitable island in the world entirely built on sand. There are no roads on Fraser, you either drive on the beach or on inland sand tracks. You can do a 4 wheel drive self tour with random people, but we’re not brave, so we signed on for a tour. We got picked up in the morning, along with a lovely Irish couple, a nice guy from Jersey named Joe, and an 8-member Czech family (4 grandparents, two parents and two boys) of which two spoke English and I only learned one’s name (Hanna). (Hi to any of you who are reading! Sorry we didn't make it out last night, we fell asleep!) Anywho, the tour was great. We saw wild dingos (the purest bred in Australia as they are on an island), lots of lizards (Mike also saw a giant snake!), and got to float down Eli creek, a gorgeous freshwater creek that flows to the ocean, and spend time in Lake Mackenzie, a freshwater lake of entirely rainwater it has no feeder. The water was amazing, and the sand was pure silica, very good for exfoliation (and Mike brushed his teeth, gross.). The scenery was amazing, the whole island is a World Heritage site, and there is even a rainforest (the only one on sand based soil… are you getting the picture? Fraser Island is unique )On the first day, our tour guide stopped the bus and told us to get out because he was going to show us how to find Pippies! Pippies are clam-like, and you can find them right on the beach and eat them raw or bbq’d. We all found them, and Mike ate a couple right off the beach, it was the highlight of his day. Tonight we’re taking an overnight bus up to Airlie Beach where we will decide if we’re going to spring some serious cash to go out on a boat in the Whitsundays, or maybe we’ll just hang out.