Healesville Sanctuary

Friday May 19th – Today’s special treat was a lesson conducted at Healesville Sanctuary. Laura and Simone had to plan the lesson for us and conduct it too. We wore low vision simulators and they had made a large print map for us to follow. We used a talking compass to help figure out which way to go. They had put together a list of questions and we had sort of a treasure hunt through the park to find the answers. It was fun and they did a great jog running the lesson. Afterwards we got to enjoy the park without the simulators on and spent the whole day there. I loved it so watch out, this will be another long post!

The Healesville Sanctuary is located about an hour from Melbourne in the Yarra Valley region. The sanctuary is one of Australia’s most recognized attractions, showcasing over 200 species of Australian wildlife and is renowned as the best place to view Australian wildlife in its native habitat. Founded by Dr Colin MacKenzie, who was granted 70 acres of land in 1921, on a lease of one shilling per year, to study native fauna for the purpose of medical research and originally called the Australian Institute of Anatomy, the Sir Colin MacKenzie Sanctuary for Australian Flora and Fauna was officially opened on May 30, 1934. The Sanctuary has achieved an international reputation as a world leader in wildlife care, research and conservation. It has 30 hectares (74 acres) of bushland offering encounters with some of Australia’s most unique and captivating wildlife including koalas, kangaroos, wombats, emus, dingoes, birds of prey and platypus. I have to say Australia does have some really cool and engaging animals and the Healesville Sanctuary is probably the nicest park we have visited here so far. It is beautiful, clean, and well maintained. The animals appear in excellent condition and the new wildlife health centre is impressive. It is a $6 million dollar State Government funded veterinary facility. I could have spent several hours in this building alone! Here’s why…

The Australian Wildlife Health Centre is a working veterinary hospital. The vets here treat about 1,500 native animals each year and perform over 5,000 procedures ranging from check ups to major surgery. The centre has various “zones” to educate visitors. Here are descriptions of a few zones.
The Impact Theatre: a central visitor space where a 10-minute audiovisual presentation explains the philosophies, values and vision of the centre.
The Operating Theatre: Where you can watch veterinarians and nurses performing surgical procedures. The surgery even has video cameras trained on the operating table which display what is happening on 2 large TV screens for better viewing!
Laboratory: Where actual diagnoses are performed by veterinarians, using state-of-the-art diagnostic tools such as the ‘Coolscope’ (a microscope built into a computer).
Post-mortem: Through a glass window, you can witness the post-mortem process and be able to talk to the veterinary pathologist. I’m not sure this would go over very well in the US, but I found it interesting.
Emergency: Wildlife patients are brought into Emergency by members of the public, shelter operators, wildlife officers, the Department of Sustainability and Environment and animal welfare organizations for emergency assessment and treatment.

While we were in the Health Centre we observed an operation to repair an owl’s wing which had been dislocated (when it was hit by a car), watched a baby wallaby being fed (its mother had been killed by a car), and saw this huge Goanna passing his quarantine inspection.





Healesville Sanctuary is also internationally renowned for its platypus exhibit, care and research, and being the first in the world to breed this unique creature in captivity. In the 1930s the Sanctuary was the first organization to successfully keep and display the species and in the 1940s hatched the first platypus ever bred in captivity (an event that made front page news in London and New York). It took 55 years to repeat that success with the birth of twin platypus in 1998 (Barak and Yarra Yarra ) and again in 2000 (Mackenzie). I find both the platypus and the echidna really interesting animals. They are both are called monotremes, which means they are egg-laying mammals.

We also saw a tiny baby koala! Simone spotted it just as we were about to leave the koala area. As we watched the keeper came out and was surprised to see it as well. She was 6 months old and the keeper told us this was the first time she had come completely out of her mother’s pouch! We must have good koala karma.