Saturday 15 September 2007

No, good old OZ






What a fabulous day we had today. We went with my husband's son and his family to our local Melbourne zoo. It's over fifteen years since we'd been there and what major improvements they've made in that time. The photos in the above posts are all in the gardens. The buildings look so authentic and serve a useful purpose. They've created rainforest gardens to walk around with great new enclosures for the elephants, gorillas and tigers.
There's a Japanese garden with all the blossoms coming out at present, that was a picture. There are fabulous pieces of garden art wherever you look.
One of my favourites I have to say was the sculpture in the Australia animal section. It's made out of old junk from the outback and farms and it has the first verse of the great Australian poem written by Dorothea Mackellar on the spokes. I know the poem by heart as we regularly had to recite it at school, but it still remains one of my favourites.
It goes like this:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewelled sea,
Her beauty and her terror,
This wide brown land for me.

She described this magnificent land of ours so well.

12 comments:

Rebecca E. Parsons/Cre8Tiva said...

oh what wonderful images...makes me want to go somewhere...thanks for transporting me to these places...blessings, rebecca

Judy Scott said...

I love that poem too ~ all the photos are amazing, its a year since I was in Australia and I love how the colours are so muted and sun dried against the blue blue sky, thats the first thing that hit me when I arrived; the colours, in Scotland we are so green and grey (lovely as well I know). Thankyou for the lovely journey ~ Judy x

Steph said...

Thanks for the trip Ro ! I enjoyed the virtual visit !

Anonymous said...

That was so much fun...felt like I traveled the world and stayed with you at the zoo the entire time!!

Julie H said...

Oh Wow Ro, now this is a zoo I might not mind visiting - I hope the animals are happy in their multicultural home. Great photo's.

Karen Cole said...

What an incredible zoo you have.

We have a place nearby called "Grounds For Sculpture". Someday when you visit we'll head over. They have an amazing sculpture collection.

Judy said...

great photos Ro.
They look like they have done some major workd down there. very nice indeed.

Marie said...

What a fun blog entry - must be a great zoo!

Anonymous said...

Ro, I thought you were overseas travelling when I first opened this post! The zoo looks fantastic.

Toni Curtis said...

OMGosh Ro, These photo's are absolutely wonderful. You did a great job with your camera.
I love,love,love what you did with that beautiful piece of paper and tiger.
And The Oscar Goes To You!!!! Thanks for sharing these. Toni

Elaine Kerr said...

Very interesting & beautiful post, Ro. As in Canada, such a varied landscape, although in these lovely photos perhaps 'architecture' is a better word.

Anonymous said...

These are all ghreat photos Ro. It seems like a great zoo, I'm glad you had a fab day out. Ux