The Butterfly House at Melbourne Zoo

Pictures start here.

Step into a magic world. You can't imagine it, you can't take pictures that explain the half of it. It's breathtaking, wonderful, miraculous. Butterflies are all around you. They alight on your clothes and hair, they settle on your bags and cameras. They fill you with delight.

It's just part of the zoo; not a special for which you have to pay extra. Go in and out all day if you want to. For comfort's sake, see that you've dressed in such a way that you can strip down to a teeshirt; the temperature and humidity that suit butterflies are a little warmer than humans like. I suppose it's like being in the jungle.

You'll notice that a lot of the butterflies are tatty. There are no birds in here to swoop on the slow ones, so they survive a little longer than they would in the wild, showing their age as they go.