Laura Morrigan

Day 4: Wednesday The next day dawned sunny so we decided to take a risk and go back to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary again. What luck, the weather held! We were able to walk around the large park for around 4 hours, and to see the pelican, cormorant and eel feeding and the Wild Skies bird show.  The pelican feeding was the first of the day. While the pelicans were more slow and ponderous, the tiny cormorants jumped up and down like eager little children. Then it was time for the eels. The eels are huge and nearly blind, they navigate by vibration. They had to stamp on the side of the bank for the eels to find them. When they finally arrived, slithering around in the shallows like some kind of small and creepy dinosaurs, they used tongs to put chunks of meat in their mouths. An ibis had come over and was trying to fight the eels for the food, luckily it was not injured, however when I saw another ibis with a missing toe later that day, I suspected an eel was responsible. The Extincti...

 Day 3: Tuesday Tuesday morning was rainy. We caught a tram and bus up to the Currumbin Animal Sanctuary hoping the weather would improve but when we got there it was miserable and they said they would probably be shutting down for visitors in half an hour due to flooding. There were a few animals to be seen and they were miserable. We were pretty disappointed but decided to come back another day and hope for better weather. (Australian accent) "This weather's bloody rotten mate!" Sad wet koala slumped over a tree. We got the bus back to the beginning of the tramline and headed back to Surfer's Paradise. We took the train on to Southport because I had located a cluster of opshops (AKA secondhand or thrift shops) about a 10 minute walk from the tram stop. I found a few items of clothing (no homewares or linen as it would be too bulky and heavy to carry back on the plane). We then headed back to the main part of Southport and visited the Chinatown, which was only about ...