Monarto Zoological Park - Two Continents in a Day: In the Murraylands Region of South Australia
There is only one way into Monarto Zoological Park but once you’re there, the metaphorical paths are many. Just seventy kilometres, or a three-quarter hour drive, from the centre of Adelaide, and we are into the rolling patchwork of scrub and clearings of an open range zoo. Its international renown stems in part from the sheer space… it’s very big, one thousand hectares big, with pioneer-Germanic-farmer cleared flats and slopes and plenty of mallee ridges and scrub patches for sheltering kangaroo and emu and more elusive echidna. This is also a home-grown wilderness that is now re-establishing.
Monarto is also linked world-wide with breeding programs for endangered species, and so the bison and Przewalski’s horses are not just ancient cave paintings come to life. They are clinging to life with the park’s assistance. Its further claim to fame is the bus trip, which for the drivers is simply a leisurely mallee ramble. For us, however, it is a quicker-than-Concorde tour of two continents with several of their endangered species in easy view, as we’re inside their great habitats with them. Our on-board guide, Terene, called a halt in “Africa”, and with good reason.
“This is our young zebra foal. She was born just 2 1/2 weeks ago,” she told a happy busload of visitors. A first foal for her mother, she was up and walking within 20 minutes of birth. Terene gave us a tip for recognising this herd’s species.
“The Chapman’s Zebra is the only species which has three coloured stripes - black, white and a gray line which is most obvious round the rump.”
The nearest habitat on tour gives plenty of running space for a canine that is a long way from man’s best friend. It is Africa’s most endangered carnivore.
“You’ll notice that they camouflage perfectly with the limestone and grassland,” Terene pointed out. “At the Adelaide Zoo, it is called the Cape Hunting Dog, but because of these blotches of colour in its coat pattern, it is also known as the African Painted Dog.” She told her Safari group that Monarto hopes to breed with their pack, keeping the genetic options open for dogs that are down under 3000 in the African wild.
The guided bus tour through the habitats is the main pathway at the zoological park, but it is not the only one. Join a walking group that sets off on kilometres of trails along ridges and dips between the vast enclosures, and the unseen web of life in the bush is revealed.. You are also invited to think of going down the volunteer guide path. There’s plenty of training, and as I joined a guide group it was obvious that there is always something fresh out on the track.
“The new Holland Honeyeater loves the box mistletoe that’s prolific in the park,” observed one of the group. As we watched it dart between the dangling green clumps of the parasite plant, Brian noted that the recent drought-breaking rain had seen the delicate red flowers appearing soon after.
Close to the striking galvo-and-glass visitor centre, there is a popular exhibit that helps to entertain the troops before the bus arrives. If you’re coming into Monarto, watch out for the meerkats - because they are watching out for you! Convivial members of the mongoose family, they usually post a very attentive guard on a high log to watch out for predators. The Zoo Foundation hopes that you get on so well that you will want to adopt the species. Not on a take-home basis, of course. You would, however, be helping to feed and nurture them with your financial support. Then again, you could dig deep and help visitor favourites, the giraffes, live the mallee high-life to which they’ve become accustomed. In that way, the habitat improvements and breeding programs for endangered species get a bigger slice of the budget action too.
The bilby is up for adoption too. Monarto has successfully bred 75 of these long eared relatives of the bandicoot that have been extinct in South Australia for many years. With Easter coming, they like to remind us that Adelaide Zoo and Monarto Zooligical Park are home to the Easter Bilby. In Australia, it brings the goodies!
I was keen to pay a special Postcards visit to the cheetahs, who are so comfortable now that they come within patting distance of the fence - not that you’d try it.
“These guys still have the hunting and chasing instinct, and we wouldn’t go walking into the enclosure under any circumstances,” warned Tony Austin, their keeper. They are the fastest land animal, meaning that when they are flat out, they’ll be clocking 110 kph. With the four fine-looking males (they are the greyhounds of the feline family) and several females currently kept of exhibit, there are some positive breeding signs.
“The conservation and breeding side is very important with the cheetahs. If a disease went through their only remaining stronghold in Africa, the Australian zoo breeding population would become a bank for them.”
It is a little known fact, but you don’t have to pay at all if you want to come up the South East freeway and enter the park to enjoy the bush around the centre, have lunch at the restaurant, enjoy a coffee with a view of the mallee, buy a pressie at the gift shop or touch and feel the skin and bone exhibits inside. But endangered species across Asia and Africa with guaranteed sightings that a game reserve cannot offer and a lion exhibit that is only months away from completion, mean that most of us still head through to the bus.
As visitors come out of the multi-award winning Visitor Centre, they can hardly conceive a satellite city was originally supposed to spread before them, with a large public service function. Thousands of acres were bought up and plans prepared, but the federal money dried up and the population projections were deemed exaggerated, and so Premier Don Dunstan’s dream city turned into a metropolis for mammals from Asia and Africa. There is much more to it than that, however. It’s also a precious patch of Australia mallee wilderness, and that means it’s often enjoying hospitable weather right through winter - surely a good time to call and take your own pathway at Monarto Zoological Park.
Monarto Zoological Park
Princes Highway
MONARTO SA 5254Open every day 9:00 am - 5:00 pm (last tour begins 3:30 pm)
Follow Monarto Zoo exit signs near Callington off SE Freeway
Ph. (08) 8534 4100
Web www.monartozp.com.au
