We were up early to be on the road to Canberra as we had to be at the zoo at 1.30pm. We had a quick McDonalds breakfast and then decided to do a deanie which out friend kept telling us about. According to Macquarie Dictionary doing a deanie is the following: To cruise the main street of Albury NSW: ”Do a Deanie” or “Hang a Deanie”
We kept driving and made a stop at Holbrook submarine or the HMAS Otway. The HMAS Otway was built in Scotland during the mid-1960s. The submarine’s upper casing, fin, and stern are preserved at Holbrook, New South Wales. We had a quick look around and a climb on it. Before jumping back in the car.
Now something strange happen next we seemed to lose time. We had planned heaps of time to get from Albury to the National Zoo but when we put it in the GPS it said we would just make it in time. So we had to hightail it to the Zoo. 3 hours later we made it just in time.
We raced into zoo and made our way down to the main reception. We didn’t need to stress as we were the only ones booked in to the enrichment tour today and the lady running the tour was late herself.
When we booked the Enrichment tour there was not a lot of information about it and no reviews. When I was telling the others about it we decided we would give it a go realising it could be good or it could be terrible. We knew we would be making and enrichment item for a random animal and attending 2 training sessions. We had no idea which animals or what we would really be seeing or doing. We started the tour by going to see all the behind the scenes areas. We got to look in the enrichment section and the food prep areas. The guide then told us that we would get to make enrichment for the sun bear and the meerkats. Which we were pretty excited about. We would also be seeing 2 training sessions.
The first training session we did was the native bird training. We entered the a aviary and came face to face with the red tailed black cockatoos that we would be helping to train. I do think they spent more time training us. The boy cockatoo took a liking to Anthony and Drew and kept landing on them even without being asked. There were also 2 galahs some curlews and some tawny frog mouths in the aviary. It was fun watching and helping them train the birds I imagine it’s going to take a long time to train them.
We then headed back to the behind the scenes areas to create our masterpiece enrichment items for the animals. We were given free rein of the enrichment shed. For the Sun bear enrichment Drew had a great idea of doing a towel that was folded with layer of bugs, then tied together, put in a pillow case and then put in a box. For the meerkats I thought it would be hilarious if we made them a ball pit with bugs in it. Then the could do Bazinga like in the big bang theory.
We spent some time putting together these masterpieces of enrichment and then we had to go get the food. So it was time to go across to the food prep area and collect bugs. The meerkats would be getting meal worms and cockroaches and the sun bears would be getting mealworms and fruit. Anthony, Drew and Dani very bravely collected the meal worms by hand and then we set off with our containers of bugs to go see Sun bear training before we set up our enrichment.
Sun bear training was cool. The sun bear doing training was Taka and he was rewarded grapes for following multiple instructions. Taka is the older male sun bear and he is housed with a younger girl named Otay. All the things they are training them to do are to help with checkups and vet visits. Taka did a great job and after it was done it was over to us to make the enrichment.
This was the coolest part as we got to go into the Sun bears enclosure. Otay and Taka have 2 connecting enclosures so while they were in one we got to go through their cages and into the other enclosure to place our enrichment items and fruit and veg around the enclosure. It was such a cool experience finding spots to hide the fruit and vegetables. Anthony particularly enjoyed hiding berries in hanging items. Once we were done we went around the outside and went to watch the bears let loose in their enclosure.
It was the coolest thing ever when we watched Taka come out and start looking for the things we had hidden. Otay was a bit slower so she didn’t come out straight away. Taka found our boxes and just ripped them open and ate the meal worms. He also found most of the fruit and vegetables. It was cool as the other people is the zoo were excited by how active the bears were and we were all proud because it was our doing.
Next stop was the meerkats where we got to put the ball pit in and scatter the food in there. Drew did the honours and before we knew it all the meerkats were diving into a ball pit to get bugs. It was so cute! It was such a great tour to see the behind the scenes of the zoo. We didn’t have a lot of time to see the rest of the zoo and before we knew it was closing time and we had to go to check in.
Check in was extremely slow and the hotel was not great. But it’s only for 2 nights. We decided to go to Ramen Daddy for dinner and I think we nearly ordered everything off the menu. It was all so delicious and the boys think it was one of the best ramens they have ever had.
We lastly headed up for a night view of Canberra from Mt Ainslie. It was really nice looking over Canberra and seeing all the lights.
