Marvelous Mooloolaba
It was a fine Saturday morning and we didn't want it to go like our usual Saturdays were all those cleaning, kitchen and programming works come in. We both are similar in many ways including going for an adventure or a trip without a plan.
Everything from searching for places to visit to concocting was done hastily ."Underwater World - Sea life" - this was our destination almost 90 kms from our home.We left at 12 pm ,hoping to be there in an hour.We wanted to enjoy every bit of our trip, feel the fun ,fill our minds with complete insanity.Since we had a light breakfast ,we were longing for food. So we took a pit-stop at Caboolture - midway between Brisbane and Mooloolaba. Our taste buds have a special craving for french fries, though we both know that it comes under the label 'unhealthy'!!. After gulping some food we restarted our journey.
The sun couldn't be more bright at 1.30 pm when we reached Mooloolaba. There was some turkeys wandering around the parking lot despite the hot sun. We got in through the entrance gate and to our surprise everything over there was painted in blue (May be to give an aquatic look. They could have painted the roads too in blue).
After waiting for 5 – 7 minutes, we managed to get one of the attendant’s attention. Everything was quick as we showed a print of our online booking record. A Seaworld impression was stamped on our wrists before we entered into the magnificent world of sea life. We were given a handout which summarized the whole structure of the sea life.
16 zones!! Sixteen zones with a variety of sea animals. Each zone had its specific aquatic species. We started with the tidal rock pools. It was impressive the way they arranged each area and each aquarium with eye-catching lighting's. We felt like those animals couldn't live more luxuriously than now. The seahorses were in zone 2, felt like taking those tiny creatures in my hands and running away. The wonder of the underwater gave immense pleasure. We were equally excited to move from one zone to another. The pacific reef, coastal wreck and shark ship wreck were in zones 3,4 and 5 respectively. We could identify most of the species and the ones we couldn't there was this piece of information written next to each aquarium. It was interesting to read about the physiology, behavior and reproduction of these marine mammals. As we walked around the aquarium we saw a diversity of corals with different names, colours and appearances. It was an incredible picture for our eyes. And then bay of ray in zone 7 and turtle temple in zone 8. The innocent and pale look on the face of sea turtles induced a thought of taking them home. Alas, we couldn’t do it.
Zone 9 – billabongs. Billabongs so much rhymed with ‘willywonga’. The billabong zone had an amazing array of species ranging from snails to sawfish. Seal Island was at zone 13, which we found the most interesting and appealing above all others. The seal island had seals as well as sea lions. April, Groucher and Bella were the name of the seals while Portia was one among the sea lions. There was a show at the seal island scheduled at 3.30. So, we rushed to the other zones with the hope of finishing all the zones and coming back to watch the show. The beauty of the jellyfishes made us go madly in love with the jellyfish kingdom. They had a great collection of jellyfishes, some with purple stripes, some with white spots and some even named ass moon jelly because of their appearance. It was almost an end to our journey through the deep sea with the amazing creatures.
However, we didn't want our journey to end too hastily. So there emerged another unexpected plan to visit the Glasshouse mountains which was on our way back home. These glass house mountains come in the vicinity of South east Queensland. The mountains had a piece of history attached to it.