Crikey - it's Steve's Zoo

First day in Brisbane was all about Chris’s medical appointments, so while he and supervising physician Dr. Chorny headed into Brisbane, I stopped off at Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo. Half expecting it to be as goofy as the Crocodile Hunter TV show, I was totally delighted to find a world-class zoo. And while there were elephants and tigers, the rest of the exhibits were dedicated to Australia’s own weird and wonderful animals. The Zoo itself is beautifully located about an hour outside of Brisbane, is well-designed to allow most of the habitat to be as natural as possible, and is spectacularly clean and well cared for. There are staff everywhere attending to everyone and everything – a lovely and safe spot to bring a family and enjoy.

The animal enclosures are designed to give maximum exposure to the animals while keeping the people more than arms length away, which is excellent. The animals look spectacular – clean, healthy and engaged. They obviously spend a lot of time with humans – the tigers were cuddling with a handler when I visited them. There are koala exhibits everywhere and you get right under the trees where they are (mostly) sleeping, and occasionally stretching and scratching. In one exhibit you can give them pats ... pretty cool. Little teddy bears.

Same with kangaroos and wallabies.



And of course there are lots of snakes and crocodiles and other creepy crawlies. It is the Australia Zoo, after all.