Tag: Melbourne

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A trip to Melbourne Zoo (23 December 2017)

Once again we headed into Melbourne Zoo in the hope of capturing some good photos on the new Carnivore’s Trail. As usual we arrived prior to the gates opening and queued up with other keen visitors. Once inside our first port of call was, naturally, to try and photograph the snow leopards. The animals, like us, are still getting used to the new enclosures and for some, including two of the snow leopards, still adjusting to smells, sights and sounds of Melbourne Zoo. Seeing little evidence of any movement in the snow leopard enclosure, we moved on with the intention of returning later in the day.

A little further down the trail is the fantastic new Sumatran Tiger enclosure. Here we eventually noticed Indrah hiding out in the back among the foliage showing how well she can camouflage herself.

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A trip to Melbourne Zoo (21 December 2017)

After many months of waiting, Zoos Victoria’s Carnivore’s Trail finally opened to the public on 19 December, but with high temperatures and thunderstorms forecast for the day, we decided to miss the opening and wait for more favourable weather. Attending the opening of Kangaroo Country the next day (20 December) was already scheduled, so we had to wait for Thursday 21 December to visit. Thankfully, the weather was suitably pleasant and things looked good for checking out Carnivore’s Trail.

As usual we arrived just prior to the gates opening. Once inside, we headed straight for Lion Gorge and the start of the Carnivore’s Trail. This magnificent new addition to Melbourne Zoo includes an incredible enclosure for the rare and vulnerable Snow Leopards. The photo below, made from 50 individual photos, is just one of the superb one-way viewing windows into their enclosure. The one-way glass in the viewing windows allows visitors to look into the enclosure without disturbing these beautiful cats.

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A trip to Melbourne Zoo (26 November 2017)

After a wonderful morning at Werribee Zoo the previous day we had decided on a quick trip to Melbourne Zoo before heading off to a family lunch, despite the forecast predicting heavy rains. Indeed, we often like to visit the zoo when the forecast is for inclement weather as the crowds tend to be smaller and we therefore tend to get better photos of the animals. Plus, we often find the animals tend to be more relaxed and demonstrative, for example, as we passed the gorilla exhibit that was in the process of being cleaned, we could hear the piercing call of the white-cheeked gibbons as they called to one another.

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A trip to Melbourne Aquarium (29 September 2017)

It had been a few years since either of us had visited the Melbourne Aquarium, so Chloe and Alex bought us tickets as a special surprise gift.

Photography in the Melbourne Aquarium is a difficult challenge to say the least. Most of the site is dark with enclosure walls that are made of thick (10cm or more) curved perspex with lighting internal to the enclosures and then there is the water itself. These two medium refract or bend the light substantially making a clean focus difficult to achieve. In addition, many of the walls are scratched either internally or externally, resulting in distracting lines across any photo. Despite these challenges, we did manage some reasonable photos.

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The clown fish looked great

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And the lighting behind the jellyfish made them seem almost alien

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Interestingly, Melbourne Aquarium also has a few reptiles on display

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Over all a really great experience and a great day out.

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A trip to Melbourne Zoo (15 September 2017)

One of the best things about being a Zoos Victoria member is the fact that you can go in anytime without needing to buy a ticket for yourself. On this occasion we invited our good friend Chloe and her partner Alex to join us as both of them hadn’t been to any of the zoos in years. Unfortunately Alex had to be at work, but Chloe was able to make it. As an added bonus, we lent Chloe our Nikon D3200 to play with so she could experience the joy of photography with a real camera instead of using her phone.

Our first stop was to visit the lemurs as Chloe hadn’t seen the new Lemur Island. The lemurs, however, were still stirring from their slumber.

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