Aussie Cruising, Steve Irwin's Zoo & the best pies ever!

As the last few chapters have dealt with how great the onboard life was on the Sun this one will focus on some of the amazing places I visited in my first few weeks in Oz.

Life goes so fast on ships that when you start a contract you barely have time to check what countries you are going to and once you are onboard sometimes you don't even know what country you are in the next day. I'd never really thought about Australia before ships and all I know about it was stereotypes from aussie soap operas and that it was hot and every creature there wanted to kill you.

We started cruising Queensland and my first port of call on my 2nd contact was Brisbane with an excursion booked to the famed Steve Irwin Australia Zoo near Beerwah.

The zoo was massive and there was no way I could cover everything in the time I had but as a pure pom I had to get all the main aussie animals on camera. Despite the apprehensive skippy above the rest of the Roo's were happy to be handfed by the guests and were mostly chilling in the sun.

Next on my hit list was the infamous Tamazian Devil which looked nothing like the cartoon and more like a big angry rat that would emit blood curdling yowls every few minutes.

Koalas were up next and I was lucky enough to seem them moving as the keeper told us that they generally sleep most of the day.

I also filmed elephants (but c'mon everyones seen one of those before), dingos, crocodiles and my favourite new animal the Wombat! One of the downsides to the videogs job is that you cannot be a tourist when you get ashore and you need to be in work mode not 'wow look at that' once you get going. The zoo had 110 acres of public areas and I was only there between 6-7 hours so I had to plan what enclosures to visit and which ones to skip, as it was my first time in an Aussie zoo I had to focus on their animals

My next port of call was the wonderfully named Yorkeys Knob in Cairns, Northern Queensland where I'd be visitng a Kuranda village and taking a cable car through a rainforest, just another day at work!

Having got my wildlife fix a few days earlier Cairns was all about the landscapes and amazing topography Australia, from the cable car ride we also took a scenic railway journey before having some free time to sight see (read:shop) in Kuranda village.

However despite the grandeur of the locations I visted that day, do you know what stuck with me most? Annabels Pantry in the village!!! Literally the best pies I've ever had in my life

But seriously as a usually proud Englishman when it comes to pies, I think we know our pies, there's steak and theres steak & kidney! No other pies exist!

Holy shit the pies were good! I was partial to a steak, bacon, egg and cheese pie and back in 2008 $4 was ridiculously good value, yes the Aussie love for a good pie might even outshine us English! There was so much choice compared to what (even today) we still have available in the UK and the pie love even extended to onboard the ship.

One of my overriding great memories from the Sun was getting back from my excursions and meeting up with friends at the outdoor grill on the ship for lunch ost afternoons. On most ships there are two outdoor food areas, a pizza place that does a margarita, pepperoni and special of the day and an grill that did simple hotdogs and burgers. However this was not enough for the Aussies (and in a rare instance) they complained, they wanted pies and kebabs and although it took a little while the ship duly obliged.

We had these great locally sourced Aussie pies now available onboard every day and an honest to god kebab spit onboard! Now most times we get a kebab its late at night from some grotty place when we've had a few too many too drink from a place with questinonable hygiene, however on the ship because of food safety standards they were probably the best kebabs I'd had in my life. On days when you simply could not choose between pie and kebab it was a pie with a side of kebab meat and mint sauce!

I could get anyway with eating this every day as I'd usually sweat half my body weight while ashore filming and I'd go to the gym most days inbetween edits.

On the next cruise diaries - More Aussie cruising stories from Darwin & Broome