The ultimate Aussie icon – the Koala at Australia Zoo

We had a few rain showers overnight and the morning was overcast but at least it was dry. Just as well we’ve kept the fly sheet on the tent since Broken Hill – it takes longer to set the tent up and take it down but at least we stay dry in the tent !
Our first destination this morning was Australia Zoo, although we both have mixed feelings about zoos and keeping animals in captivity generally that’s offset, in part at least, by the genuine conservation effort that we know the Australia Zoo is heavily involved in. It’s been one of the places on our list of places to visit for years.
We enjoyed our visit although we were a little disappointed in some aspects. Obviously the crocodiles were well represented and that is, after all, their core focus but the rest of the Australian reptiles and the raptors were only given a cursory representation which was a bit of a shame. On the plus side we finally saw Koalas and some live Wombats !
We left the zoo at about 2pm and headed south again towards our destination for tonight, Dayboro. As per our preference we followed the more minor routes that took us into the Glass House Mountains and beyond to skirt the edge of the D’Aguilar National Park. We stopped along the way for second breakfast (coffee and banana cake) at a cafe in one of the small towns we passed through.

A salt water croc, in some ways I’m glad we never came face to face with one of these in the wild !

Once again the roads were mostly enjoyable to drive with tight twisty sections as we wound our way up and down the mountains. Some of the views were fantastic, particularly as, as the afternoon wore on, the clouds cleared and we had blue skies and bright sunshine which always makes any trip more enjoyable 🙂 Unfortunately the powers that be in this area seem to dislike providing viewpoints or anywhere you can pull off the road to admire the view. Still we got to see some fantastic views of the mountains and valleys that will remain with us.
Tomorrow we’ll probably head to Coolangatta on the coast to the south of Brisbane. It’s only 130km from here as the crow flies but navigating our way around Brisbane will slow us up a bit and no doubt stress me out coping with the traffic, tolls, traffic lights and all the other wonderful stuff that large cities create. We should catch up with Celia when we arrive there.