Australia Zoo — i am nicole

Australia Zoo. Best day ever. This is Steve Irwin's zoo and is now a wonderful legacy to his memory. It is more of a conservation than zoo, so all of the enclosures are large and nice and full of happy lil creatures. The koala and kangaroo areas are open and made to where people can walk around with the animals. The kangaroos were so incredibly chill, we were able to walk right up to them and pat their noses...which was obviously my favorite.

The face of pure joy as I touch my first kangaroo.

We learned that this zoo is a koala breeding facility and that males are very territorial and aggressive so all of the koalas out in the park are female. They have a huge number of these adorable little furry babies hanging all over the trees.

I thouched the butt! (That's all we're allowed to pat unless we spend more moneys)

The main attraction is a crocodile show where a massive croc jumps at and snags food out of the air from keepers. There is a nice memorial video honoring Steve and keepers walking through the audience with birds and giant snakes.

We also caught a show with adorable young tigers playing with their trainers while we all ooh'ed and aww'ed. The trainers made toys and threw them into the water so the tigers would jump in right in front of us.

Next door is the zoo's animal hospital where they treat not only their animals, but any other wild Australian animals that need help. We happened to walk in during a surgery to repair a koala's hip after he'd been hit by a car. We learned that kangaroos have a horrible success rate at hospitals. If they break an appendage and wake up with a cast (or any bandages really), they panic so dramatically that they have a heart attack and usually die.

And on that happy note, here are some other animals we saw:

Dingos: cute, aggressive dogs (& Sadie's family amirite Mo, Sheila, Chad)

And of course, croc statues everywhere. This is Steve's zoo after all.