I have always wanted to visit the Australian Zoo.  I used to watch Steve and Terri Irwin on Crocodile Hunter and I have followed the lives of their children through social media recently.  I was so sad when Steve Irwin passed away.  The only solace I feel was that he did so while he was doing something he loved: being with animals.  

After visiting the Australian Zoo, I have to say that I feel like they really conveyed his love for animals all over the zoo.  You see pictures of Steve and his family with various animals with information about how they have done their part to try and help save them.  It’s a special zoo.  

We arrived around 12 and were there until almost 5pm.  We made sure to go to the show at the Crocouseum where they had various birds fly through the arena and brought in a giant crocodile and fed him.  It was a very informative show with clips from Steve and his family before, during, and after the show. I even learned what to do if a venomous snake bites you from one of their clips.  I did not know that a compression bandage could save your life! 

I really enjoyed how close all the animals seem to be.  You can actually feed and pet the kangaroos.  There is also an area where you can pet a koala.  The lemurs are just hanging out on the sidewalk near you as you walk around the island.  The set up of the zoo is very open and there were very few animals I did not see, which is not the case at most zoos.

We visited Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary after procuring a koala cuddle online for 2:45.  It’s a good thing we did!  They were pretty much sold out when we arrived around 1pm.  We started our visit by going left over to the nocturnal animals and the barn.  We quickly bypassed the  sheep, goats, chickens, and pigs.  My husband had to stop and try to make friends with the tiny donkeys. (They were not interested.) The nocturnal animal section has three gates to go through.  They close at 4pm, even though the park is open until 5pm.  You can see a lot of the enclosures since you are walking above ground on grated metal.  We did not see any of the tiny nocturnal animals, but we did see two wombats.  We also were lucky enough to watch the keeper feed the Tasmanian Devils.  I actually helped her find one of them because she needs to throw the food (wrapped in paper bags) in two directions.  She fed another Devil with a box, which he promptly picked up with his mouth and carried off.  It was so cute.  

We found the tree kangaroo really high up in the branches of his tree and headed toward the koala encounter.  On the way, we saw some lizards, dingos, and crocodiles.  You stand in line to hold the koala and they take your picture and give it to you as part of the cost.  You can take pictures with your cell phone as well, which we did.  The keeper who handed us the koala (I think his name was Conley) chatted with us more than other people.  I think she could tell this was more about interacting with the koala than the picture they took.  My husband went first and Conoey pointed his little nose up to sniff him.  Adorable.  They are so soft, but you hold them gently on the butt and don’t move because they will think you are a tree and have to clutch onto you. Their claws are sharp!  When I held him, he was looking over at some noise on the other side and they had to lure him to look at the camera with some leaves.  After you hold him, you can pat his back.  We loved every minute of it. 

Of course, because it is a koala sanctuary,, there are a TON of koalas.  They are all so fun to watch.  Many are sleeping, since that is what they do for 22 hours of the day.  However, there was one that climbed down his “tree” and then sat and looked at us for a bit before running over to another tree to climb.  Others are quite involved in eating and it’s fun to watch them navigate the branches of leaves.

The other exciting part of our visit was getting to see two live platypuses! I have always wanted to see one, but it’s very difficult to do so in the wild.  The room was quite dark where they were kept.  We watched them find the crayfish (through electrolocation) and then dive to bring them back to the surface and eat them. You can tell they can’t see too well. It was so cool to just sit and watch them.

They also had an area to hang out and feed and pet many different types of kangaroos. An emu was hanging out in the enclosure as well. 

I found  a friend in the aviary area. This adorable galah or pink and gray cockatoo climbed up their cage and stayed there to talk to me and pose for pictures. I wanted to take it home with me. 

The koala sanctuary was tiny compared to the Australian Zoo, but it had a good number of animals to see and we enjoyed our visit.