A Day at Melbourne Zoo (March 14th)

Today Caroline had an office meeting in the Melbourne Zoo. Since traffic in the city can be thick, she’d be cutting it close to making it back to the house to pick me up before we had to be at the pier for boarding the Spirit of Tasmania—so instead of meeting her in the city via afternoon train, I decided to come along and make a day of it.

On the way we picked up her boss, Michael. Together they navigated the streets and we arrived at the zoo at about 9:30. Once inside, we parted ways and I headed off, just me and my trusty camera. I walked through the monkey exhibits first. The first few exhibits were empty, and I presumed the animals were getting fed breakfast and their enclosures cleaned. But it was a nice day and there were no other people, so I just walked a little slower.

I couldn’t find any gorillas, but I did come across a tank of carp:

And then watched some Small-clawed Otters playing and chripping:

Then I visited the ‘tree-top monkey’ exhibit and had much better luck. They were all out and eating, and didn’t mind me being there at all:

I came across the ‘food preparation’ area and peeked inside, and found the gorillas:

Then I wandered to the elephant yard.

Somehow I looped back through the monkeys and saw the Orangutans. A mother and her baby were playing under a sheet while on the other side, a female sat with her face pressed up against the glass:

I headed into Africa next, and saw the giraffes eating:

And my favorite, the zebra:

I did a quick tour through the kangaroos, not impressed after my wonderful experience at Healesville. By this time, the zoo was starting to fill up and so I was trying to stay either ahead of or behind the herds of school kids. Got some boar pics:

And then crossed into Big Cat territory. They were all behind chain link fence which made for crappy photos—plus, it was starting to get hot and they were starting to nap in the shade. But the leopard was nice enough to wander past:

I got sidetracked by the brown bears when the keepers turned them lose to eat:

Then I finished looking at the Big Cats (although most were cougar-size and smaller) and then stumbled across the tortoise:

With the sun really heating things up and the droves of people crowding around, I took refuge in the reptile house:

As I continued my aimless wandering, I came across a massive flock of Rainbow Lorikeets bathing in the misters provided for the Red Tree Kangaroo:

After another look past the small monkeys:

I headed back to the elephants and watched the keepers bathe and elephant:

Just after that, Caroline joined me. As we were starting to walk away for lunch, the elephant keeper walked past and said it was time for elephant painting, if we were interested. So of course we followed:

After lunch, I took one more loop through the tree top monkeys, because I really loved the long-haired black and white one:

I then found the lion exhibit. There were two males, and they had just gotten lunch:

While I was taking pictures of the lions, they announced that they were going to feed the African Wild Dogs (NOT HYENAS!), which were literally right behind me. So I watched that:

After watching the Dogs, I wandered past the meerkats:

And then past the Tigers again. On last night’s news, they’d said how the Melbourne zoo had locked down for a few hours because one of the tigers had gone missing, but they found it dead in the moat around its enclosure. Now, on the sign that shows pictures of each of the tigers, one of the cubs is crossed out with ‘RIP’ written under him. There are supposed to be two more cubs, but they were not there. Only one lonely mother:

Now towards the end of the day, I’d felt like I’d seen everything I wanted to—except the shy Golden Pheasant I’d missed earlier. So I doubled back to the birds and low and behold, the Pheasant was showing off all it’s glory:

Lastly I ended up in the butterfly house, surrounded by silently fluttering blues and oranges and reds and blacks. Caroline’s meeting ended and she met me inside. She’s been dying to show me St Kilda beach, so we headed there next, to kill time before we could get in line for the ship.

Then, finally, it was time to go to the boat!

I’ve never been on a cruise ship before, so the Spirit of Tasmania was a completely new experience. It can carry 1400 people and travels across the Bass straight each night, taking people and vehicles back and forth from Tassie to the mainland. Going into Tasmania, you can’t bring fruit or vegetables, and all over the loading dock there were posters warning you about sniffer dogs and the $100 fine. Didn’t see any dogs though.

It took a while to get all the cars loaded on the ship, and the fit was tight on the garage decks. There were semis and campers and motorcycles and lots of cars. A five-bank of steel cages sat in the corner; pets had to stay locked up. A lone corgi barked for its owners, while in the truck next to us, a yellow lab and a black looked perfectly content to sleep in their dog-boxes. Must be stable-minded hunters.

The boat was huge. It has a casino, two bars, two restaurants, a movie theater and a little kid’s play room. Wood floors, colored lighting, lots of comfy seats and TVs. Our room was on deck 8, so we made our way upstairs to put down our stuff before dinner. The cabin was small, but Caroline had paid extra for a porthole, so we got to look out over the ocean as the boat pulled away. Dinner was good, a reasonably priced buffet, and they we went to bed fairly early in preparation for a 5:15 wake-up call.