Alan and Amanda's Adventures in Oz: September 2012

Amaze-balls!

We spent our first day in Singapore at the Zoo. It was incredible.

Enjoy the pictures!

Elephant showers!

Elephant balance beam

A nice hat trick. Haha.

Saying goodbye!

Cute little elephant sculptures on the boardwalk

Yup, that's a white peacock, and a six pack. :)

Orangutan

Who's that handsome monkey?

Capuchin monkey.

Don't feed the animals!

It was lunch time for these guys

One of the many new arrivals to the Zoo that we saw

Hanging out with the baboons

Another wee one

Beautiful tigers

Otters

A couple of wild and crazy guys

Zebra

Giraffes

Leopard Cat

Sun Bears

All the bears!

Pelicans

Cotton topped Tamarin with baby

This zoo was incredible. They are building a new River Safari section for the Giant Pandas, and it's due to open in December. It looks like it will be amazing!

Thunderbird Park

A few weekends ago we spent a weekend on the Gold Coast for a friend's birthday. (Happy Birthday Lanair!) We started by fossicking for thundereggs on Mount Tambourine.

Duck for cover!

Translation - we went looking for special rocks.

Posing for the camera

A thunderegg (or thunder egg) is a nodule-like geological structure, similar to a geode, that is formed within a rhyolitic lava flow (according to Wikipedia). They usually have pockets of different coloured crystals when cut open. We went to a thunder egg mine in Thunderbird Park, and were each given a bucket and a pickaxe. It was fun, but quite hot. And my short attention span doesn't really lend itself to spending long periods of time doing the same thing... Alan, on the other hand was a fossicking superstar!

Lanair is ready to fossick!

We had fun, and Alan filled all of our buckets with his hard work. We got to cut a few of our thunder eggs open, and they look pretty cool. It was a fun way to spend the afternoon, but if anyone is thinking of going, I'd recommend taking lots of water and sunscreen, and maybe something to sit on. You have to work at it in order to get the thundereggs out of the ground.

While up on Mount Tambourine, we also went to a Glow worm cave, conveniently located on a winery.

Duck... Duck...

Lizard?

I don't have pictures of the glow worms. Apparently, they like the dark and don't like bright lights or camera flashes. Divas. That being said, it was really cool to see the glow worms, and while I don't have pictures to share, I do have this...

"I wish I was a glow worm
A glow worm's never glum.
How could you be unhappy,
when the sun shines through your bum?"

Way better than pictures, right?

We spent the night out at Surfer's Paradise and then went to Seaworld the next day. We purchased year passes when we went to MovieWorld earlier this year, and they get us into Seaworld as well. Bonus!