A trip to the Zoo

MELBOURNE 193
Originally uploaded by wcm_melbourne

Our big weekend adventure this week was to head out to the Melbourne Zoo.

http://www.zoo.org.au/

It's located about 5 Km north of the City. It is Australia's oldest Zoo and was opened in 1862.






We started out with the rainforest area where they had Gorillas, monkeys, etc. There were about half a dozen gorillas that you could view from a number of locations. There were all in view and moving around so it was pretty nice to watch them for a while.








The big hit of this area was the butterfly house. It's a big green house filled with thousands of butterflies that you walk through. 2 landed on Mel's hat as it had a flower on it.

Next was the Asian area, big things here were the tigers and elephants. It was a fairly cool day ( 10 or 15 degress ) and most of the animals were out and moving around.

We eat lunch at a food area nead the elephant pen and saw one being fed. We then saw a second elephant do some tricks for a bucket of apples and oranges.



After lunch we did the outback area and say the kangaroos, wombats, wallabies etc. This area was not quite as nice as the others and the animals were pretty lethargic.

Lastly we saw the lions and reptiles but by this point the kids were ready for naps and we had to hit the road. There will still be lots left to see next time.

We bought yearly passes as the pass includes the other two Zoos in the area ( Werribee Open range zoo and Healesville Sanctuary ). The passes were about the cost of 3 visits so it seemed like a pretty good idea.