The National Zoo

“For an adrenalin-filled zoo experience, take a 2-hour ZooVenture Tour where you can hand-feed the big cats, bears, monkeys, dingos and others.”

A cheetah we didn’t feed

Parliament House

Old Parliament House

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We’re not sure why we decided to go to the zoo, maybe because it’s called ‘The National Zoo’, which made us think it would be pretty spiffy, for a zoo.

After a scenic bus ride around the back of Canberra, we arrived at the zoo and found our way to the entrance, where two bored teenage boys sat behind a grill asking for heaps of money to let us in. One of us is very old, and protested at the price, but they only knocked it down a little bit. When we went in, we immediately thought we had paid a lot of dough to visit a dust blown, and somewhat sad looking prison for animals.

Like most zoos, this one has lions and tigers and bears, oh my, as well as many other four-legged creatures, feathered friends and things that slither. Our favourites were the otters - Oscar, Mustache, Big-Lips, No-Lips and Omar – who were all having a wonderful time frolicking in their watery playground. But most of the other animals looked quite bored and altogether fed up with lying around trying to look cute in the middle of a dusty paddock.

The giraffes looked particularly PO’d, having nothing in their enclosure but a few wooden poles with baskets of leaves on top, and despite their very long necks, their location prevented them from spying on any other animals.

A depressed tiger

A perplexed alpaca

Two bored scaly creatures

A way down the path were some human animals outside a cafeteria, making more noise than the animals that were locked up. No wonder they all looked so sad, the animals that is, having to put up with all that racket every day. Everyone seemed to have a mobile in its ear, the human animals that is, and they were all talking very LOUDLY while their kids ran amuck with glee, eating everything they could get their hands on, and teasing the monkeys with no mercy. Once again, we made a mental note never to go anywhere during school holidays.

We think this kid’s name was Beaumont – we heard somebody calling him that,
in between shouts of ‘Stop that!’, ‘Get away from there you little bastard!’ and
‘Put that otter down!’

There was one attendant who did a magnificent job with a gaggle of kids - he obviously had a way with them, and could be seen all through our visit, marching them through the winding paths, usually with one of the children on his shoulders.

He taught them how to feed carrots to an emu, and was so good at assuring them that emus are not to be feared (as long as you stand still), that later one of the kids dragged a reluctant emu over to us and demanded that we give it a pat because emus like pats and we mustn’t be afraid.

So we had a close encounter with an emu, but declined to climb into the lion enclosure or mingle with the bears,
although at this zoo, you can do those things if you’re crazy and have $150 to spare.

To visit the official National Zoo website, click here > http://www.nationalzoo.com.au/