Date: 29th Jan 2007 – Australia Zoo!
Well we decided to head North to the Sunshine Coast and as we were heading up that way, there was an accident on the main road and it was completely closed. This meant that we had to take an alternative route and as luck would have it we ended up passing a big sign for the Australia Zoo, for those in the UK, Steve Irwins place. We drove along Steve Irwin Way and thought we’d just stop into the zoo since we were passing. It was well worth it.

The zoo is absolutely massive and has all kinds of cool Australian animals in it. As you can see from the photos on flickr, it was great to get up close and personal with some of them. The entire time we’ve been here has been a constant koala and kangaroo watch as there’s signs around places saying to look out for them in case you hit them! Anyway, we didn’t see any until the zoo and it was absolutely brilliant. As you probably saw in the photos, we got to feed kangaroos, cuddle a koala and see lots of crocs and other weird things. It was a really good day out and even though it was very warm, we just kept gulping down the water to keep us going. I can’t believe how exciting it was to just have a roo come over and eat out of your hand – so cool! After we’d been at the zoo we decided to head on to Mooloolaba or Maroochydore so off we went.

When we arrived at Mooloolaba, it was a very quaint little beachy place compared to the Gold Coast, but when we looked down at the beach, it had tons of rocks in it! We decided to keep on going to Maroochydore to see if we liked it any better, but we ended up pretty disappointed with that too. It’s not that it’s not beautiful there and lovely, it is, but it wasn’t what we were looking for. Many people had told us how lovely Noosa was and since it was only 30 minutes north from where we were, we headed up that way. It did have a nice beach and we went out for a walk along it, but the main problem seemed to be that it was all very chic and boutique like, not really our thing so after much deliberating we decided to drive all the way back to the Gold Coast. It took 2 and a half hours, but at least we knew that we’d made the right decision in the UK when we chose the Gold Coast over the Sunshine Coast. It just seems too isolated up there.

It was late by the time we got to the Surfers Paradise, well, late by Gold Coast time anyway. We decided to just stop at the Holiday Inn and check out the room availability for the night and the prices. We didn’t want anywhere expensive so when we were told the room was only £65 a night we booked in for the remaining 3 nights we have on the Gold Coast before heading to Melbourne. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were with the hotel!!!! We have a balcony with a view right out onto the beach and it is literally 5 minutes to the beach from here. You can see our room views at flickr if you’re interested. Not bad for such a cheap price and the room is huge too. It’s a nice hotel even though it has no internet access which sucks. We didn’t do much really that night as we had a big day of shopping ahead.