Australia Zoo - Beerwah, Australia

This post is a little late and I apologize, but this past Sunday - June 7th - I made the trek up to the Australia Zoo while staying in Gold Coast for the weekend. I woke up from my hostel in at 5:00 A.M. and caught a nearby tram for a 15 minute ride to catch a bus for a 30 minute ride to the train station where I would take an hour train ride north to Brisbane. Then in Brisbane I would catch yet another train that was supposed to take me the whole hour and fifteen minutes north to Beerwah, but because of track construction I was forced to take it only ten minutes before boarding a complementary coach bus for an hour long ride all the way to the Zoo's front stoop. The journey back to the hostel later that night was just as tedious...but it was totally worth it.

But why did I go to so much trouble to go to a wildlife park when there are many zoos and aquariums throughout Australia, particularly in Sydney where I am residing (I was visiting Gold Coast just for the weekend)? To be blunt, because it meant a lot to me. When I was young and growing up, my superhero and idol was never a comic book character, musician, or athlete. It was always Steve Irwin, or "The Crocodile Hunter". Growing up I was obsessed with nature, particularly nature of the reptilian variety and one of the only ways that my parents could keep me indoors for an extended period of time was when "The Crocodile Hunter" was on Animal Planet. I had countless tshirts, posters, books, board games, along with many of his video tapes (wow, thats weird to say). I really looked up to him and he fed my passion for nature and my want (or need) to travel the globe. 

Even though my snake-breeding and reptile-keeping days have past I still see countless parallels between my life and my current goals and dreams and those of when I was a youngster dreaming of following in his footsteps. My love for photography has developed into my personal tool of capturing the world and showing its beauty to others. Overall, it was a stunningly beautiful wildlife park and the only one I have visited where the animals looked happy...not just healthy, but actually happy. Thank you Steve for being my hero while I was young, I am thankful to have finally made it to your zoo. You continue to be missed.