Werribee Open Range Zoo

Monday April 17th – We invited Jhaneen to go with us to the Weribee Open Range Zoo as she had never been there. She was nice enough to pick us up and we started the day with a tasty brunch before driving about 30 minutes away to the Zoo.

Werribee Open Range Zoo has about 500 acres of open pastures where animals such as rhinos, zebras, antelope, and giraffes roam together. There are 2 short walking paths leading to several exhibits but the bulk of the zoo is seen by taking a 50 minute “Safari Bus Tour”. It was a really well done zoo and we got lots of close up photos from the bus. The day was cool enough that many of the animals were relatively active. They also had exhibits for lions and cheetahs, separate from the other animals of course. A group of highly entertaining Vervet Monkeys held our attention for quite some time as they leaped and raced around the exhibit. Here’s an interesting fact about them; Female vervets live on ancestral lands. Female infants inherit their mother’s social position as well as her territory. In contrast, males transfer between groups every few years, often with a brother of a friend. A male’s position depends on careful alliances with the females. Go Girl Power!

Another one of my favorite animals are the Meerkats. We have seen them at the zoo in Singapore, the Melbourne Zoo, and today at the Werribee Zoo and they never fail to make me smile. They are a type of Mongoose and live is social groups up to 40 animals. They wrestle and play and scurry around, stopping periodically to dig for insects. One meerkat is always on sentry duty, usually standing up on a rock or tree stump to watch for predators. If one appears the sentry calls a warning and all the playing animals hustle back to the burrow. They are very active and engaging creatures.

I have added the link for the Melbourne Zoo which includes the Werribee Open Range, the Melbourne Zoo, and Healesville Sanctuary which we will be visiting later.

After we drove back into Melbourne we took Sue to experience Iced Chocolates (remember the yummy milkshakes that we had last week?).She enjoyed this cultural experience as much as I did.

We spent the evening preparing for tomorrow. We will be spending the morning with the guide dog trainers who want to pick our brains on some of the training techniques we use in the US. I’m looking forward to the exchange of ideas and chatting with other “dog people”.

Speaking of dogs; today’s Aussie of the Day is again brought to us by Jhaneen. The phrase “two and a dog” is used to describe something being not very crowded. When I told Jhaneen that we had gone to the movies on a rainy day she asked, “was there just two and a dog, or was it packed?”