Brisbane is a nice city but I felt it tried to copy other cities instead of having its own thing. For instance it has a replica of the London Eye right along the river which also cost an exorbitant amount to ride so if I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg to see London, I was definitely not going to ride the “Brisbane Eye.” As opposed to London there was no line whatsoever to ride the as it claims “largest Ferris wheel in the Southern Hemisphere.”

Also around the Brisbane River is an area that very much resembles Darling Harbour, which was not comparable but it felt like Brisbane was having an identity crisis.

We also visited the parliament because Hendrik is into government buildings, as for me after this trip I’ve had enough of government buildings and seeing the red senate and the green house.

Brisbane is definitely trying to be a nice city and a tourist destination, but the problem is there just isn’t that much to do so the one day was plenty of time to see it.

We spent the day at the zoo, and unknowingly it was father’s day in Australia so it was jam packed which was a bit annoying but at least we got a free muffin on entry. I haven’t visited every zoo in Australia, but I think this one is probably the best. I thought that the Australian zoo would be one of the worst because I heard they were going out of business, but they probably aren’t since they are expanding. There is a lot to do and see and the grounds are tidy and the animal cages are spacious and clean. The animal information sessions were actually informative and entertaining, as opposed to many I’ve seen in other animal parks. This one is definitely in another league compared to the Sydney zoo which was a major disappointment because the whole zoo seemed so unkempt.

I was able to feed an elephant a piece of banana, which was fun since I’ve never fed an elephant before, and of course we went to the famous crocoseum for the croc show. It was cheesy but still entertaining because the animals were so well trained. It was definitely the best flying bird show I ever saw and the crocks were neat since I’ve never seen the animal in action in real life before. The snakes were a bit dull since snakes don’t really do much.

There were lots of iguanas wondering free around the zoo like common pigeons and an area where people could pet and feed kangaroos and wallabies which is always fun. I definitely recommend going to this zoo, and if you only do one zoo in AU this should be it.

Me in Australia Zoo

Holding a mini croc

The crocosseum

Then we drove to Brisbane and got situated in a campsite and took the bus to town to have a drink in a pub. It was nice being back in a city where anything I wanted was available.

The next morning we were off to Noosa where there was a festival going on so there was no parking anywhere near town, but we were able to find parking at the beach so we went boogie boarding. It looked like a cute town when we drove through it, and we wished we had more time to spend there since it looked like there is some good surfing, but we were worried about falling behind schedule, and we had to go further south the same day.
We made our way down to Beerwah, which is close to Brisbane and the home to the Australia Zoo. I had wanted to visit the zoo because I had heard so much about it after Steve Irwin’s passing.