"Where is Steve?"
You could tell that the crocodile trainer was a little brought down when after a strenuous and possibly life threatening half hour of crocodile feeding he had to field that as the very first question. Got to be the most difficult part of his job.
In case you've been living under a rock somewhere (a rock without cable TV) Steve Irwin, "the Crocodile Hunter" is the host of a successful series of nature shows. Successful mostly in the US. The Ozzies don't seem to know him that well.
Actually most of these are wallabies. There was one mid-sized red kangaroo but the keeper said that he got irritable unless you brought food and we didn't have any left.
One of the reasons that one treats roos with respect.
A really big snake. This was a 7 metre long reticulated python.
They can grow to 10 metres so I guess it is still sort of a teenager.
An asian otter.
A bearded dragon.
Camels were imported to Oz in the mid-nineteenth century because someone figured
they'd come in handy in the deserts. Thanks to the foresight of the British, you
can now purchase an ice-cream cone full of camel chow and feed it to the camels
at the Australia Zoo. Since they're
very girlish looking - long eyelashes and sort of a seductive smile when seen
in profile - I expected them to be dainty eaters, but this on grabbed Tristan's
cone full of food with its prehensile lips and devoured it with astonishing
speed. In the picture, Nicoline, very much impressed by the speed with which
Tristan's cone disappeared, is dropping her cone faster than even a camel's
lips can snatch. The camel waited patiently until we'd reassembled the cone
and then repeated the first performance.
There were several kookaburra's, all recovering from being hit by cars. One
even laughed for (at?) us.
Aside from those in Australia Zoo, there are no giant tortises in Australia. I'm not sure
why they're here: perhaps the cultural "giant whatever" tie in?
After the zoo we drove around in the nearby Glasshouse mountains. They're an irregular group of volcanic plugs, only about half the elevation of of Mt. Warning. Since we were driving through relativey thick bush, they tended to appear and disappear mysteriously. Every view was different and the general impression was a large version of one of those Japanese gardens in which there are seven rocks, but no vantage point from which one can see all seven at the same time. After a half hour's casting around, we finally got to an overlook from which everything looked vastly less impressive than we expected. Since our calves are only now fully recovered from the Mt. Warning escapade, perhaps we won't bother with these.
We did find a didgereedoo maker in nearby Beerburum and purchased an authentic didgereedoo. The tube is made from a tree that has been hollowed out by termites. The termites can eat the heart wood but leave the outer sap wood. Later, someone comes along and chops the tree down and batta boom, batta bing you've got a didge. A little beeswax for the mouthpiece and you too can annoy the hell out of everyone within earshot.
Since I told the kids that they'll both have to perform in front of class, they've been practicing diligently. Either they're afraid of public humiliation or they really enjoy making farting sounds.
These people have too much time on their hands.
Today, Wednesday, we spent goofing around in Noosa.
At the insistance of the kids, we rented a stinky old motorboat and put-putted around on the Noosa river. We also rented fishing gear and Nicoline blossomed into an intense, nay obsessed fishergirl. After our initial half hour produced only sad little fish, she demanded that we seek out a better spot. Since the better spot didn't even yield a bite and since everyone else was mad with boredom and two-stroke fumes, we curtailed the trip and fed the rest of the bait to the fish around the dock.
I'm really glad we're getting a sailboat.
Tristan and I went surfing in the late afternoon. Since we're on the eastern edge of the time zone, sunset is around 5:30pm and there's almost no twilight. We got into the water at around 4 and paddled around First Point to Little Cove instead of walking because Tristan was sick of lugging the 7' 6".
The surf was a little bigger than the last time but still just trade wind slop. Every 10 or 15 minutes we'd get a larger set, which, due to the lower tide, could be ridden all the way across Little Cove. I had promised Tristan some time on the longboard so we swapped after I'd nabbed a couple of waves and given up on getting one of the set waves. For me, the 7' 6" is pretty small, so I'd almost given up on catching anything else. Just floated around and enjoyed the sunset and a brief rain shower. Just before the gathering gloom chased us back to First Point, I managed to get a wave with the shortboard. Just a couple of turns but it was an interesting taste.
When we got back to First Point, what little twilight there was was pretty much gone. I could just barely see the waves, but the lure of an almost empty line-up was too much to resist. Figured I'd sit around for a couple of minutes and see what showed up while Tristan paddled in. Just a minute or two later a vague lump shouldered out of the gloom. Figured it was hopelessly small but paddled anyway and suddenly I was surfing. Cool. Made the drop and gaped in astonishment as a solid waist-high wave walled up in front of me. Carefully, so as not to blow my ticket to the beach, I started to work the board. Ducked under a grom scratching for the shoulder, made it back into the curl, re-accelerated managed a cutback and then shot down the final wall. Ok, I get this shortboarding thing now.
At one level, frustrating, but we're having so much fun on land that I can't really complain too much.
On Friday (the 19th) we're moving further north to Great Keppel Island. Better snorkling than the barrier reef and we can stay at the house of a friend of Karin's.
