Underwater World

Today was another one of these days when Nicole had a day off and thought we'd just have a quiet day in. Oh no we won't.

"What shall we do today then," I said.

"Well I though we could just have quiet day," she replied.

"Oh..." I ummed, and followed on with "I thought we could go to Underwater World."

So I went off and walked the woofers on this week's habitual walk down the brook, while Nicole made a packed lunch. Just as I was about to set off, Nicole caught me to tell me that our tail-end Charlie loaf was mouldy. I said I'd get one from the convenience store on the way back.

I was picking up a Tilda-poo when my mobile went off. "Look shall we just call this Underwater World thing off and do it another day" said Nicole. "Organising this lunch is a nightmare." Intent on my poo I said "Well why don't we just grab lunch there."

So we set off, not really expecting much, to Mooloolaba, one of our regular dog-walking haunts... only without the dogs, unusually, and with Nicole in the driving seat, also unusually, and after an hour or so pitched up at UWW. 40 bucks later we were in, and ten yards in from the door Eloise was cooing at the Stingrays.

Then Eloise cooed at some lobsters and got to touch a sea cucumber, which felt less like a cucumber than a pair of nice M&S moleskin trousers, before they've got paint on.

We worked our way round various aquaria with tropical fish in, and had an eyebrow-lifted look in a 4 Wheel Drive which had fish in it, for some reason we didn't quite arrive at.

There was a nice tableau where a crocodile basked by a waterfall which flowed into a mangrove-lined pool within which, we could see, some hulking great fish skulked. A further waterfall cascaded down to a pool on the floow below, and looking over the balcony we could see there were turtles in there.

Then we looked at some cheeky Asian Otters who were cheeky while an Underwaterperson gave a talk about how they can bite through a steel-capped boot. Across from them was a large pool in which some seals were swimming around. Eloise loved the seals, and so did I; they were gliding around very gracefully, twisting and turning and rolling, as though they were flying underwater.

Next door to them was a large auditorium called "Seal Cove" in which a show was going on. We thought we would get some lunch and come back to that later. So we noshed some potato wedges and fish and chips with milkshakes and coffee, then descended down into the bowels of the building to see what was what.

We got to look at the skulking hulks from the river scene, which were barramundi and such like things, and really very large fishies. They reminded me of the fish we saw a few years ago on our deep dive, when Nicole got nitrogen narcosis and thought they were looking at her funny, whilst simultaneously mistaking a tomato for a banana (or something like that).

Then we looked at the turtles for a bit, but there were frogs in tanks down the other side of the hall and Eloise was especially taken, for some reason, by the cane toads.

Further downstairs was a fantastic whole-floor tank with a moving walkway moving through a tunnel which meandered all the way around, with tropical fish, a coral reef, and stingrays and sharks - yes sharks - which were quite a daunting sight! We went around the circuit there three times, then it was time for the seal show.

Which was pretty standard though nevertheless very entertaining. Someone volunteered to feed the seal - they hold out their arm, the seal jumps of a rock twenty feet in the water, then jumps out again and grabs the squid from the girl#'s hand - but we figured she was a plant when the jetty she was on unexpectedly tipped her into the water and the seal stole her pants.

Then they offered us the unmissable opportunity to kiss a seal for $6 which we passed up, until a lady from Tassie whose daughter didn't want to kiss a seal gave us a ticket. So we had Eloise kiss a seal, which on balance she wasn't too happy about.

The whole thing was very intertaining and all that was in quite a small building, we thought it was cleverly put together.

Here is a happy snap of Nicole in the tunnel at the core of the depths of Underwater World.



Oh and there was a section on dinosaurs. It was crap. Eloise still got scared though by a recording of a Tyrannosaurus of all things. They had remotely controlled dinosaurs that didn't work.