Australia Zoo
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2006
1
25
228
Trip End
Jul 15, 2008
Beerwah,
Australia
Thursday, December 28, 2006
We are on the Bruce Highway in our Wicked Campervan and headed north again. Our first stop is Brisbane where we have to have our van checked out for a safety inspection at the Wicked depot there. We spent a few hours walking about the city center where we came upon Anzac Park. The small park is filled with memorials to solders lost in every campaign Australian and New Zealand fought in. Some of which we hadn't heard of before. Then headed on to Beerwah, the home of the late Steve Irwin and his Australian Zoo. We spent the night in a caravan park near the zoo so we could get in as soon as it opens in the morning. [GPS 26 48.830S 152 57.990E]
Dec 28, 2006 Crikey!
Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo is probably the best place to see all of the wildlife of Australia in one location. [GPS 26 50.178S 152 57.559E] Okay we kind of went over board taking photos here.
In Animal Planet style there is also an excellent show at the amphitheater which they call the Crocatorium. After the show we headed for Noosa Heads, but we couldn't leave the Beerwah area without getting a closer look at the unusually shaped mountains we'd been seeing from the road. The Glasshouse Mountains are very distinctive, particularly Mt. Tunbubudula. After a few photos from the viewing outlook site we headed northeast to connect with the Bruce Highway again. We were making good time on the Bruce when we saw looming on our left the famed Ettamogah Pub. An all to blatant tourist trap, but we fell for it anyway and wished we hadn't. A large off kilter building based on some popular cartoon drawings of a country store that advertised the sale of Ettamogah Beer (a fictitious brand) with country bumpkins loafing about saying Aussie folksy humorous things. Think Al Capp's Lil' Abner. We'd have thought better of the place if we hadn't stopped. The beer was okay 'cuz they can't hardly screw that up, but the food sucked. The lamb pie we ordered looked yummy on the outside, but like Arvid's first attempt to bake a potato in a micro wave, the inside was burnt to charcoal. To make things right the waitress offered not to charge us for the burnt pie. Customer satisfaction is not a big deal here.
