Exploring with My Big Brother

"Yeah, but it's eerie here, I'm scared," I said. Ominously, a lightning strike lit the dark rainy skies with the roll of thunder, and in the overgrown vegetation there came the sound of owls hooting again, and the distant barking and howling of dogs.

"Matilda, I'm right here, I'm your big brother. What sort of brother would I be if I didn't keep my little sister safe?" Tyler gave me a reassuring smile.

"Okay, but I don't want anything else weird to happen," I said, nervously accompanying my older brother. Maybe Dad was right, and Tyler was a bad influence after all?

"Remember this guy?" Tyler stopped at the front of one of the park's restaurants, where in front of it an anthropomorphic alligator statue stood. The cartoon alligator wore a chef's hat and apron, and was licking his lips. The restaurant was called 'Mr. Alligator's House', and unusually for an Australian theme park had been an all-you-can eat American-style restaurant, fried chicken a major part of its not so calorie conscious menu.

Relaxing a bit, I laughed. "Yeah, I remember him. Some of the others in my university group described him as 'problematic.'"

"Why would a fictional alligator dressed as a chef from a theme park that closed down ten years ago be problematic?" Tyler asked.

I rolled my eyes. "The two girls and one guy are really left wing, woke, SJW types. We were looking at some old clips and adverts from Wild Animal World when doing some research, and they thought the alligator -- well the guy in the alligator costume - was talking like an African-American, you know saying things like, 'Y'all want some friend chicken?' They said it was offensive, racist and culturally inappropriate."

"Your generation is way too sensitive, Matilda," Tyler laughed.

"Hey, count me out," I laughed. "They also got upset because there was a clip from a kids show from the mid-2000s with people in animal costumes, and the crocodile from the Northern Territory was depicted as thick and the sheep had a Kiwi accent. They thought it was terrible to make fun of people from the Northern Territory and New Zealand."

"Oh yeah, I remember taking you and Zac to see that show when you were little," laughed Tyler. "But fancy getting so upset about an old, harmless kids show."

"Welcome to Generation Z Tyler," I said. "You're lucky, you're Generation X."

"You sort of don't fit as Gen Z," observed Tyler. "You're more like a millennial."

"Yeah I guess," I said. "One of the girls is worse than the other two, she's a vegan, and thinks zoos and wildlife parks should be closed anyway, and was horrified that such a place like this ever existed in the first place."

"This park used to do a lot of breeding work for endangered species, the animals were kept in big enclosures like their natural habitats and there was big emphasis on conservation and the environment from what I remember," observed Tyler.

"Try telling some of my class at university that," I sighed.

"Well let's go and see for ourselves," said Tyler, as we set off for the Australiana area of the park. When it was open, the parks had wonderful gardens that must have cost a fortune to maintain back in the day. Now it was completely overgrown, hedges, shrubs and trees now like a jungle after close to 10 years of abandonment.

"So what happened to the animals after the park closed down?" Tyler asked as we entered what had been the Australiana area, spots of rain still falling and a kookaburra laughing heard from a nearby stand of eucalypts.

I thought back to my research. "Well, when it first closed there was a businessman who thought that he would like to start a new zoo in Brisbane up on the Redcliffe Peninsula and move the animals there. But this would have been hell expensive, the market was pretty saturated and it fell through. Even though the park had closed people working with the animals worked here until they found new homes for them. They got moved to other zoos and wildlife parks not only in Queensland but all around Australia, so they all found new homes in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, Canberra and Tasmania as well as regional parks in those states and territories. After that the park closed for good."

"That's the main thing," said Tyler, as we looked through a rusting fence at what had once been an Australian animal walk-through. I had thought it just great as a child, meeting and feeding kangaroos, wallabies and emus. Some other animals were kept in other enclosures, and Tyler and I looked into the empty and overgrown areas that once kept echidnas, Tasmanian Devils, wombats and dingoes. To one side was the koala encounter area once very popular with overseas tourists but now falling apart and in front of us was a nocturnal house that once kept animals like small marsupials, possums and platypus.

"I dare you to go in there," laughed Tyler, pointing at the nocturnal house.

"No way," I said.

Tyler grinned. "Not even if I double-dared you?"

"Never."

Tyler looked at the nocturnal house. "It seems locked up anyway," he observed, trying to turn the door handle which to my relief didn't open.

We went to the farm area which was next, and where back in the day one could meet birds like chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys and peacocks. There were sheep, goats, cows, pigs, alpacas, donkeys and horses, and there were demonstrations of farm activities like milking cows, shearing sheep and dogs herding sheep. The handlers, sheep and the dogs would have a hard time doing this show now, as the arena was completely overgrown with weeds and tall grass.

The sheep shearing building was run down and falling apart, as was an adjacent building which had housed small animals like mice, rats, rabbits and guinea pigs, which Zac and I had thought cute when we were children. Further away intruders had broken into a large shed which had housed an impressive collection of farm machinery like tractors, both contemporary and vintage, but the machines went to a new home when the park closed so the thieves' efforts would have been in vain.

Moving on, we went on to what had been the big cat section, home to tigers, lions and panthers back in the day. But the only cats to be seen in the overgrown enclosures now were feral cats that inhabited the overgrown structures. A ginger tomcat, as big as the black cat we had seen at the gift shop, slunk into the grass.

"Bet you're glad there's no lions here now, hey Matilda?" Tyler joked as he indicated the broken structures of the enclosure, which if it still housed lions now would allow the big cats to come and go as they pleased and enjoy a human or two for lunch.

"You're not kidding," I said.

More large raindrops were falling as Tyler and I turned to continue, but I stopped in alarm as an eerie wailing sound came from the overgrown grass, growling and hissing also audible.

"Cat fight," I said.

Tyler grinned. "I don't think they're fighting, I think they're getting to know each other."

The sound of the mating cats continued as Tyler went on our way. "Next stop, Reptile Island," Tyler declared after looking at a signpost that was still legible, despite being tagged by graffiti vandals over the years. On the way up the overgrown path, we passed two structures that had housed insects and other arthropods back in the day.

One was a butterfly house, in which visitors could stand among butterflies in a tropical environment, much like a greenhouse. Some panes of glass on the butterfly house had broken over years of disrepair, but like the nocturnal house back in the Australian section the main entrance doors were shut tight.

The other building had housed no end of creepy-crawlies -- stick insects, spiders, centipedes and scorpions -- and Tyler teased me as he noticed the door was ajar. "I bet you'd meet a few spiders in there now, Matilda?" He indicated cobwebs that grew at the door.

"I don't want to find out," I shuddered.

The small island that had been home to the park's impressive reptile collection was surrounded by a natural creek that ran through the park, and we had to cross a wooden bridge to enter it, similar wooden boardwalks installed here for park visitors to navigate. I couldn't help but feel though that over the years of neglect termites had turned the wooden structures into an all-you-can-eat buffet. There was evidence of their activities, and some planks of wood had fallen away. Again I was very careful where I stood.

"The dinosaurs, I'd forgotten all about these guys," said Tyler.

The park of course did not have real dinosaurs, but what it did have were some very realistic dinosaur statues all over Reptile Island. There was a ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Stegosaurus, a three-horned Triceratops, a Brontosaurus, a Duck-Billed Dinosaur, an Iguanodon, affixed to a pole in the air was a Pterodactyl now with an ibis standing upon it, and in the waters of the creek was a Plesiosaurus, the statue looking like the Loch Ness Monster. I had liked the dinosaurs back when I was a little girl, but seeing them now in the overgrown park on an eerie and stormy night was a really strange experience, it was like seeing them in some primeval setting.

"I have to admit Tyler, this is kind of cool," I said.

"See, I told you that you'd have fun," Tyler assured me.

We looked into some large enclosures that once had housed giant tortoises, Australian goannas and ferocious Komodo Dragons. The frogs, snakes, lizards and turtles had been in a large building, and the door was open. Tyler's torch-beam picked up a large rat scurrying inside, and my eyes picked up several mice moving very fast.

Tyler was amused. "I don't think that the rats and mice would be so keen to go in here back when it was open and filled with snakes and lizards."

"No, I don't think so," I laughed. Hoping that there were no snakes in here waiting for the mice and rats that now called the structure home, I was extra careful where I stood as my brother and I looked around the abandoned reptile and amphibian house, but there wasn't much to see in close to total darkness.

Back outside, we walked to the area where the crocodilians had been kept back in the day. In separate ponds obviously there were Australian freshwater crocodiles, the larger and far more dangerous saltwater crocodiles and in a third area American alligators.

"You got me in trouble at school back when I was seven," I said to Tyler, indicating a faded sign that advised that the fourth enclosure was home to a gavial.

There was now nothing to see apart from weeds, rubbish and stagnant water, but years ago the exhibit had housed a gavial, an unusual looking crocodilian from India, with a long toothy snout.

"Oh yeah," Tyler laughed. "You asked me what a gavial was, and I told you it was a gay crocodile."

"And when I went to school on Monday and we had to write about what we did on the weekend, I wrote about how I had gone to Wild Animal World and my brothers and I had seen a gay crocodile," I said, feigning indignation. "I got in trouble, and they called Mum for a conference to see why I would write about something like that."

"I got into trouble too," Tyler said, laughing. "Dad rang me and called me a twit."

"Well, you deserved it that time," I said, putting on a prissy and pious expression.

"Dad might think I'm a twit," said Tyler, "but at least I'm not as big a twit as the people who thought it would be a good idea to bring cane toads to Australia."

I followed the beam of my brother's torch light, to where a huge, ugly cane toad was hopping across the boardwalk. "Oh gross," I said, watching as the pest amphibian vanished into the undergrowth.

We crossed the creek and went through Bird World, a group of huge aviaries that housed different types of birds. One had been an Australian birds' aviary housing cockatoos, kookaburras, kingfishers, magpies and the like. Another with a large mesh covering overhead to keep wild birds out housed Australian water-birds like swans, pelicans, ibises, egrets and cranes. There was another section for owls and raptors, and in a large rainforest exhibit there had once been two brightly colored but very cranky cassowaries. Nearby was another area where there used to be a birds of prey show involving hawks, eagles and falcons, which was always very cool.

Lots of European pines grew in this area, and now the tops of the abandoned aviaries were covered in years' worth of pine needles and cones. Crows roosting in the pine trees emitted their harsh calls, and with more lightning in the skies it added to the spooky feeling of the abandoned park.

"So, let's head for the safari park now?" Tyler suggested, as I swatted at a mosquito that was determined to have a meal on my arm. Nearby at the other way into Bird World was a flamingo pond, the stagnant waters of which provided a perfect breeding ground for the blood-sucking insects. When the park was open there were heaps of flamingos in and around the pond -- but all were statues. At that stage the only live flamingos in Australia could be found in Adelaide Zoo, and since then they had passed away leaving no flamingos in Australia since then. As for the flamingo statues in this theme park attraction, they had found a new home at a winery up in the Hinterland.

"You do know that we're not going on a safari?" I joked.

Tyler feigned ignorance. "Really? I thought they might resurrect it just for us, a private guided tour."

We set off, but seemed to keep walking and walking and walking. I had relaxed a bit, but a couple of times I swore I saw another light moving around, and worried other people might be about. One time I swear I heard footsteps, but they stopped abruptly and I didn't hear them again. There was also the sounds of owls in the trees, and even more eerie sometimes we would hear the sound of birdsong normally heard in daylight hours, like warbling magpies. A fox shot across our path and into the abandoned resort area, the construction of which had consumed much capital for a loss-making venture and a major reason for the park going out of business.

"We seem to have been walking around for ages, I swear we're going around in circles," I complained.

"No, we're on the right track, trust me," Tyler said.

"Okay then genius, why are we here?" I indicated the butterfly house which stood just across from us.

Tyler looked sheepish. "Oh um, I'm not sure."

"We have been going in circles," I said. "And it's getting late now, I swear we've been here for close to two hours."

"It's not even seven yet," said Tyler, holding up his watch so I could see.

"That's because your watch has stopped, that was about the time your car broke down," I said. "The real time is ..."

My voice trailed off as I looked at my own watch on my left wrist. "That's freaky, my watch has also stopped at the exact same time as yours."

"Yeah strange," said Tyler. "Anyway, I think I've got it right this time, let's go check out the safari section."

Sighing, I followed my brother on my increasingly sore feet hoping Tyler had it right this time. Looking back at the butterfly house, I felt more than a little disquiet as I noticed that the door was open now, when earlier it had been closed. I was more and more convinced that this was a strange place, and best avoided especially by night, but continued to follow my brother.

"See, I told you I'd get it right this time," Tyler declared as we reached the open range part of the park. Years earlier, safari buses would take guests on a tour to see zebras, giraffes, ostriches, antelopes, camels, water buffalos, rhinos and Asian elephants that grazed in their respective areas, but with the animals long gone the fields were now completely overgrown with grass and weeds, trees coming up where buses had once driven through the area.

Turning back, Tyler and I passed some enclosures that had once housed hippos, hyenas, baboons, mandrills and orangutans, plus some animals from the Americas like porcupines and capybaras. I swear I could have heard the laughter of a hyena, but it was probably just my imagination again and Tyler seemed to hear nothing. Both of us did hear feral cats calling out again, and the eerie and distant sounds of stray dogs barking and howling.

"How about a round of mini-golf, Matilda?" Tyler asked as we headed for what had been the 'fun' area of the park.

"Okay, but no way am I putting my hand in the holes to get the balls back, they're probably full of spiders," I said. We looked at the overgrown ruins of what had once been a really good mini-golf course. "Actually, that was another reason the park went out of business."

"How would a mini-golf course send a large theme park this broke?" Tyler looked puzzled.

"Well, not the mini-golf course itself," I said. "It was the way that some of the attractions were organized -- things like entry to the mini-golf course, pony rides for the kids, koala encounters, the safari bus rides and such. It wasn't very well organized -- well it was shambolic on really busy days - and led to negative reviews and visitor numbers starting to fall away."

"Talking about things that look about ready to fall ..." Tyler pointed upwards, and my eyes followed to where Tyler was indicating. Wild Animal World had boasted a ski-lift, and it remained rusting and decaying like the rest of the park. Hanging from the cable was one of the gondolas, and it was only just holding on, the car likely to detach and fall to the ground within the year.

Not wanting it to be tonight with me to be standing underneath and meeting my end at just 18 crushed to death by a ski lift car while urban exploring an abandoned theme park, I hastily moved out of the way and Tyler and I had a look at the water park.

Wild Animal World's water park wasn't as large as some specifically designed water parks found on the Gold Coast, but still had some impressive slides and pools. "Hey Matilda, there's no queue at the slide, how about you have a go on it?"

Tyler grinned and I shook my head laughing. "No way, not on your life."

The slides now had vegetation growing over them -- prickly vegetation -- but worst of all was where one would land. The once pristine pool was now filled with stagnant water full of algae and weeds, frogs croaking. In branches overhanging the pool ibises roosted, the birds casually defecating into the water which they presumably also drank. The stench was unbelievable.

"You're sure?" Tyler teased.

"Quite sure, I forgot my bathers," I said.

We moved on to where the main rides had been. "I can't believe they didn't sell these off when the park closed," said Tyler.

"Well they did with some rides, like that one," I said. I indicated a place where a wild mouse style indoor roller coaster had once stood, the ride's façade and the barriers for the queues the only evidence of its existence. "But others were a bit too large for that."

Tyler and I looked at the largest roller coaster at the park, a huge wooden coaster which now seemed to be a play palace for termites. The ride was in a dangerous state of disrepair, the sub-humid South Queensland weather not helping the crumbling wooden coaster. Another roller coaster nearby was metal, but rust was quickly overtaking the tracks.

"I don't think those rides will be passing their safety inspection," said Tyler.

"No, even when the park was open there were safety problems with the rides," I said.

I indicated a water-based ride called 'The Wild Nile', where guests had boarded boats to go past pyramids, pharos, and statues of dangerous wild African animals that growled and roared, and recalled reading an old online article about it. "Like that one, apparently inexperienced ride attendants let a really fat guy who was too heavy ride one afternoon. He fell out of the raft, and trapped inside the ride. It took hours for the fire brigade and paramedics to get him free. It made news all over the world."