Featherdale Wildlife Park has been around since 1972 so it’s no wonder every time I walk through its gates I feel like a kid again. I came on school excursions and visits to the very same place with my fam when I was young, so bringing my tribe to visit Featherdale is always a treat for our entire family. During the July school holidays we took advantage of the special offer that all kids enter the park free! Read on to find out why every Aussie kid should stop in and visit this wonderful wildlife park.
It’s an Australian animal wildlife park
We had some brilliant conversations with our tribe about the animals that we saw on our visit to Featherdale. Our eldest asked how we knew the names of all of the animals and how we knew so much about them. The easiest answer was – because they’re all Australian animals! And it was amazing to see how much they knew themselves already too – when we found the wombat happily eating his carrots, my eldest said “look Mum – it’s wombat stew!” Both girls spotted the Kookaburra perched in the koala enclosure and started singing ‘kookaburra sits on the electric wire, jumping up and down with his pants on fire’. It’s a great learning experience for the tribe to get hands on and up close to so many of our country’s native animals.
You can have real encounters with the animals
There are lots of opportunities to get up close to the animals at Featherdale Wildlife Park. You can purchase food cups for $2 a cup as soon as you walk through the gates or as you enter the wallaby walk-through area. The animals love nibbling at the feed right out of the kids hands and they’re quite used to receiving pats and attention from everyone. There are other fun things to do including watching the animals during their feeding times and hearing their keepers talk about them, or you can take a guided walk through tour with a keeper who can tell you all about the animals as you go. There is also the super fun opportunity to have your photo taken with an animal – we couldn’t resist posing with Victor the koala and giving him a good pat. But you can check Featherdale’s website for other fun experiences including breakfast with a koala and a mammal, reptile or bird experience.
Featherdale is working on breeding and conservation research
See these adorable dingo puppies? They were an absolute highlight of the day for the tribe, watching them playing and rolling around in the sunshine together. Dingoes are just one breed of animal that Featherdale Wildlife Park is currently carrying out research on to ensure the longevity of endangered species such as this. Their captive breeding program plays a vital role in fostering knowledge and protection of future populations of endangered species. Other animals being researched include quolls, rock wallabies and Tasmanian Devils. Our visits to the park help Featherdale Wildlife Park to continue this most important research!
The park has all the things a tribe could need
There was so much to do at Featherdale that even though the park was bustling with tribes, we sometimes found ourselves the only ones at a particular enclosure. There are over 1700 animals at Featherdale Wildlife Park including birds, mammals like echidnas, bats and farm yard animals, marsupials including koalas, Tassie Devils, kangaroos and wombats and reptiles like the very impressive salt water crocodile. All of the kids in the park were scrambling from each area of the park to find the stamp stations to put a stamp in their passport to say they’d visited all of the animals. There was also a cafe with lots of food options including some healthy menu items, but you are also welcome to pack your own picnic and bring it to the park for the day, with plenty of seats around the place to set up camp and have a bite to eat.
Kids are free in the July school holidays
Pink koalas and squishy dinosaurs were the order of the day at the epic gift shop when it came time to depart, but we were more than happy to spoil the tribe with a toy or two especially because kids get to enter the park for free through the July school holidays. This is a great saving for families who are looking to do something special with the kids during the winter break, but make sure you get to the park early as parking spots are limited and you may find yourself having to park in nearby streets if you miss out on the spots reserved for visitors of the park.
