Queensland's Most Famous Zoo - Crikey!

Owing to the vast amounts of litigation this zoo's management now seems to leap into, almost with the same amount of enthusiasm its former boss had for annoying deadly creatures, I'm loath to name it.

Suffice to say, the last boss pissed off one creature too many, whilst making a TV programme on how dangerous they were, and was well and truly stingray-ed to death as a consequence. This zoo is most famous for catching and irritating crocodiles, and is now in the hands of the late boss's allegedly warring family. Know which one I mean?

Well I went there last week for the first time and I thought it was great. However, this blog didn't get its name for nothing, so let me elaborate.

I went with my family who were visiting from the UK. My 17 year old brother had been a big fan of the TV shows, loves animals and was desperate to go. The sight of him shaking, literally, with excitement as we bought our tickets was one of the day's highlights. And the first thing he was dying to look at in Queensland's most famous zoo? The shop.

So my first impressions of the zoo were the exceedingly friendly Stepfordesque staff at the entrance and the mind boggling range of clothing on offer in the shop(s), courtesy of the late boss's wife and the late boss's increasingly famous little girl. This cherub's latest album appeared to be playing in some parts of the zoo and her DVD was being advertised on the big screen in the animal baiting arena.

Despite my English cynicism however, I enjoyed the experience. The zoo's angle on zoo keeping is on the conservation of Australian wildlife. Indeed, some of the profits do go back into conservation projects, although nobody's saying how much. So it was great for my family to see some of the aussie creatures they hadn't yet managed to see in the real world. To my dismay, the koalas and kangaroos of Noosa had done a Blue Peter during my family's stay and were nowhere to be seen. So this zoo trip made up for it. Where else can you stroke a koala and feed kangaroos? At Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane? Well, yes.

But there were lots of other weird and wonderfuls, such as the cassowary; a highly dangerous emu sized bird with an evil glint in its eye that eats its own poo just to show how hard it is. There's a lovely aviary where the birds have a lot of freedom to fly around, although obviously not above or beyond the nets. Again, more poo there -sometimes on your head. And the kangaroos were clearly used to having visitors pat and prod them and shove handfuls of food in their mouths, judging by the relaxed reclining position many of them were lounging around in. Unsurprisingly, the larger, standing up kangaroos with the big fists were left well alone.

The zoo also highlighted the problems of introduced non-native species in Australia's fragile ecology. They had a rather fed up, solitary fox in what appeared to be the Naughty Corner and a few guilty looking cane toads on a domestic garden stage set in a glass tank.

My family's main cynical vitriol was directed towards the American-ness of the zoo staff, specifically the ones making animal presentations to an audience. It must be remembered that these talks are aimed at children as they are viewed by the zoo as being the next hope for saving the planet's animals. This accounts for the vaguely patronising tone but not for all the grating Americanisms in their speech, especially when these people are only from Beerwah. Ugh.

The legacy of the former boss is never forgotten. In fact, there's an eerie feeling that he hasn't quite gone. His picture is still all over the marketing and his videos are still playing on the big screen. How long this remains the case will be interesting to observe.

For now though, I can certainly recommend a visit there. Just save up first (3 concessions and a 'normal' cost $175 and you'll need extra if you want to actually hold something furry), remember to take your het and a boddle of warda, and a pair of earplugs to cut out all the background singing and Americanese.