A VISIT TO THE MALENY BOTANICAL GARDENS AND BIRDWORLD...

 Max loves animals and birds.  At the moment one of his favourite things are cockatoos, so we decided to take him to Birdworld at the Maleny Botanical Gardens as a special treat for him...

We left home mid morning to make the drive up to Maleny.   On the way we stopped at McCarthy's Lookout to check out the amazing views of the Glass House Mountains...

The Lookout wasn't far from the Botanical Gardens... When we arrived,  I took Max to look at a few of the birds that were on display near the little reception area whilst Steve bought tickets for us to see the birds...  There was a staff member who offered to put some of the birds on us if we wanted to get a photo....

Max was pretty keen, but he was also a little nervous, still he let the birds sit on his head and shoulders and I made sure I got photos of it so that he could show his parents...

Once we had paid we still had around half an hour before we had to be down at the Birdworld Averies for the tour to begin.  We took Max for a little walk down to the first terraced area to take some photos of the Big Chair...

We found some painted rocks hidden in the garden..

Our tour of the Bird Averies lasted just over an hour with us visiting 5 different averies in all.  We were able to pick up a feather duster to take in with us at the first Avery.  We could use this to shoo off the birds if they started to make a nuisance of themselves landing on us and trying to eat our buttons or clips.  Not many people took a Duster, but Steve sure did.  We have had experiences in bird averies before and we weren't too sure how we would go with Max and the many birds landing on his head or shoulders...

The first Avery we went into were many common birds that had been rescued...

There wasn't a lot of interaction with the birds in this avery, they weren't coming and landing on us which suited Max fine as he was a little nervous to be in with the birds....

The next Avery we walked into was full of Australian birds, lots or cockatoos, parrots etc.  Initally we were given some black cockatoos to have photos taken with, but Max was not keen on having a black cockatoo land on him.  He was more than happy to have the white cockatoo take an interest in him though, andmore than happy to be photographed with them... They are his favourite birds at the moment...

After walking through the Australian bird avery we then went into the exotic bird avery.  Max was a little worried about walking into this avery as although he loved the colourful birds, the size worried him a little...

Max loved the time we spent in with the birds and it was over an hour.. Once our time had finished, we headed back up to the reception area as Max was extremely thirsty...  We bought a couple of drinks and an icecream and headed to one of the rotunda's to eat it.  Whilst we were in the shop though, Max spied some stuffed toys and was taken by a stuffed parrot...

After we had our ice creams he was keen for Poppy to go back for a walk to the shop with him so that he could show Poppy something special...  He has Poppy wrapped around his little finger and convinced Poppy to splurge out and buy it for him...

It was stinking hot and Steve's foot was playing up.  We tossed up whether we should go walking around the grounds, what with Steve's foot and the heat, but then it had cost us considerably to visit the place so we felt like we really wanted our monies worth as well, so much to Max's delight in the end we hired a truck as Max called it ( a golf buggy) for an hour and drove around the grounds.

 

Max was super excited because he got to sit in the front with Steve and I was relegated to the back seat.   We headed off to conquer the gardens and our first stop was at a lovely lagoon with a fishing trawler at rest in it...

 

 I think was one of Max's favourite areas of the Gardens.  He loved the big old boat and spent ages n it trying to drive it..  He loved all the buttons, and steering wheel and we had a bit of trouble trying to get him away from it....

From here we checked out some of the other parts of the gardens.  We were thankful though we had the buggy as it was super hot and humid and there was a storm brewing..

 

There was a lovely oriental garden that Steve took a wander through, and then we moved on again...  There were lovely manicured lawns and rose gardens, traditional Australian windmills and water tanks...

Our next stop was Fairyland in the gardens.  Max loved this one and I am sure Willow would have too.  We spent a bit of time wandering around the different little displays taking them all in...

Back into the buggy again to do a little more exploring.  We came across another sort of oriental garden but this time with bridges and waterfalls...

We could see that a storm was starting to brew,   we could hear some thunder so thought we would need to hurry up and finish driving the rest of the gardens... We only had about 15 minutes left with the buggy before it was due back.  Max was getting a little concerned with the thunder so we took off to see the last little section of the gardens.  This time we didn't get out, we just drove through each section...

There were a few spits of rain as we pulled back into the parking bay at reception... We could see the sky getting darker so decided that it would be best to head for home as it looked like the ocean was about to drop out of the clouds...

 Buggy parked and we're ready to go...

It poured with rain almost the whole way home...  and then more when we got home...  so we decided to stay put and not go visiting.  Earlier on we had planned to go visit Barb and John but with the torrential rain we really didn't want to be out in the weather.  Besides we had been out in the hot sun all day and been on the go so we knew that Max was feeling pretty tired...

We had a pretty early dinner and had no trouble putting him to bed tonight.  He was asleep almost as soon and his little head hit the pillow...

It has been so much fun having this little holiday with him..