Glass House Mountains, Australia

December 27th - December 28th 2011

We decided to take a trip to Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo in Beerwah. I had been there before with my family when we visited Australia five years ago and it was a highlight of our trip so I really wanted Craig to see it. The entrance fee had gone up by $10 since the newest edition of Lonely Planet came out so it was $59 each to enter. We went in and saw the lizards and alligators then the giant aldabran land tortoises which Craig loved! We watched them get fed and then wandered around until the daily show in the 'Crocoseum' which showcases snakes, birds and crocodiles. The birds fly all around the stadium and the crocs are let loose in the enclosure with Terri, Bindi and Robert Irwin. It was a fantastic show to watch and the Irwins enforce their support of animal welfare issues too.

Kangaroo

The new Africa exhibit was good as the animals had really big enclosures and a highlight was walking through the kangaroo enclosure where you can feed and stroke the kangaroo's. We saw the afternoon elephant feeding and watched the tigers. We spent a long time walking through each of the enclosures and exhibits and really got our moneys worth. Our final stop was the new animal hospital which has been set up to take care of injured animals and try and rehabilitate them.

After Australia Zoo we drove to the nearby Glass House Mountains. We drove around and ended up at a campsite which felt more residential where the locals seemed to stare at us, luckily we were only there for the one night.


Glass House Mountains

Glass House Mountains

The next day we had breakfast and left to go to a viewpoint which looks over the Glass House Mountains. The scenery was stunning. We did a small 800m circular walk through the woods and saw interesting trees with markings all over them, we weren't sure if they were natural markings or somehow man made. After our walk we returned to our camper and started our journey to Brisbane. The sat nav got us hopelessly lost but we eventually made it to Nestle Inn which was quite far out of the city but we could easily catch a bus everyday in to the city.