It's always a shame when it comes time to post reviews, and they're not overly favourable, but here goes.
Yesterday my girlfriend and I made the 80 minute drive to Ballarat to visit these two parks. We allowed all day, arriving at Bird World before 11, but we were on our way home by 3, and that included a half-hour break for a quick picnic lunch at Lake Wendouree.
Bird World costs $10 for concession entry - I think it was $12 for adults. It's one of those weird little places that has clearly had some money to spend, and spent it in all the wrong places. There is an expensive and no doubt high-maintenance elevated walkway through some quite lively bushland, that probably extends close to half a kilometre in total. There is a potentially excellent planted walk-through aviary, perhaps a third the size of Melbourne's Great Flight Aviary, but relatively devoid of birds (a pair of king parrots, a small flock of cockatiels and a scattering of finches was all I saw in there).
Apart from that, the entire attraction consists of about 30 dated and extremely ugly flight aviaries, built in a single long run of aviaries. The construction is standard - wire, concrete floors, bricks up to about 40cm to discourage mice and snakes and MDF board for the back wall. Each contained 1-5 birds, most of them a single pair of Australian native parrots. In essence, it was a relatively extensive backyard aviary setup that has been opened to the public. As if looking through one layer of wire isn't enough, a second wire mesh layer has been installed 5cm in front of the other, no doubt to stop people sticking fingers into cages, but at the same time making photography, or even pleasant viewing of the birds nigh on impossible. In addition, a large number of the parrots (ie, at least 10) showed signs of feather plucking. I'm reluctant to say outright that there were mites on some of the birds, because the birds possibly infected were down in the relatively dark back sections of their aviaries.
The only saving grace was the owner of the park taking us into the largest single-species aviary there (perhaps about 15 square metres) that held a trio of red-tailed black cockatoos. One of the cockatoos is habituated to visitors and spent a few minutes perched on our shoulders. Probably a "visitor experience" I'd be happy to pay $10 for at a Halls Gap or somewhere like that... but it didn't deflect from the overall negative experience at Ballarat Bird World. We were there about half an hour, and ten minutes of that was with the cockatoo, and another 10 in the walk-through aviary.
Overall, I can't recommend Ballarat Bird World as a place to visit. The parrot collection is decent, but not really any better than at the more pleasant and wider collection at Jirrahlinga in Barwon Heads. I have seen more pleasing enclosures in backyards, too. Species list (I've probably missed one or two):
- Red-tailed Black Cockatoo
- White-tailed Black Cockatoo
- Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo
- Major Mitchell's Cockatoo
- Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
- Gang-gang
- Long-billed Corella
- Cockatiel
- Eclectus Parrot
- Regent Parrot
- Superb Parrot
- Princess Parrot
- Hooded Parrot
- Cloncurry Parrot
- Twenty-eight Parrot
- Golden-shouldered Parrot
- King Parrot
- Red-winged Parrot
- Red-capped Parrot
- Eastern Rosella
- Northern Rosella
- Crimson Rosella
- Green Rosella
- Indian Ring-necked Parrot
- Alexandrine Parrot
- Plum-headed Parrot
- Barbary Dove
- Diamond Firetail
- A couple of other species of finches
On to Ballarat Wildlife Park. First of all, this place is almost as expensive as the Zoos Victoria properties, but nowhere near as extensive as any of them. At $24 per adult, it is not a cheap day out.
Their website also makes a couple of claims that are demonstrably false. It claims to be the "only regional zoo of its kind on such a large scale." Well, if you're limiting that statement to "parks that have a decent-sized reptile collection, a smattering of native mammals and virtually no birds", then it's still pretty much a tie with the Australian Reptile Park in Gosford. As it stands, Ballarat Wildlife Park is on a *smaller* scale even than the Halls Gap Zoo only 150km away, and that's before you start looking at Gorge Wildlife Park, Mogo Zoo and Cairns Tropical Zoo. They're simply not telling the truth. Further, the website mentions that they have over four hundred individual reptiles. For all I know, that's true, but no more than a quarter of that number are on display.
Nevertheless, the reptile and amphibian collection is moderately extensive for an Australian zoo. I counted 33 species on display:
- Saltwater Crocodile
- Freshwater Crocodile
- American Alligator
- Aldabra Giant Tortoise
- Burmese Brown Tortoise
- Star Tortoise
- Eastern Box Turtle
- Pig-nosed Turtle
- Eastern Long-necked Turtle
- Rhinoceros Iguana
- Lace Monitor
- Mertens' Water Monitor
- Gippsland Water Dragon
- Frilled Dragon
- Central Bearded Dragon
- Shingleback
- Eastern Blue-tongue
- Blotched Blue-tongue
- Cunningham's Skink
- Burmese Python (albino morph)
- Rough-scaled Python
- Boa Constrictor
- Brown Tree Snake
- Arafura File Snake
- Coastal Taipan
- Inland Taipan
- Common Tiger Snake
- Red-bellied Black Snake
- Mozambique Spitting Cobra
- Siamese Spitting Cobra
- Rattlesnake (forget which species)
- One unlabelled snake that I couldn't identify.
For the most part, this park hasn't changed since the last time I visited perhaps 10 years ago. The only real addition in that time has been a nice enclosure for spot-tailed quolls adjacent to the cafe - this was probably 4-5m high, providing great climbing opportunities for the quolls, was glass-fronted and was reasonably well planted at the lower level. Of course, I didn't actually see any quolls. That was the story at the Tasmanian devils, common wombats and hairy-nosed wombats as well. When you have only about 10 mammal species, when four basically nocturnal species are no shows, there isn't much left to see.
At least 50 Kangaroo Island and red kangaroos are kept free-range across the property, and feed bags are sold for $3. I have a feeling there is no limit on the amount of bags that are sold each day, because by the time we arrived at about 12:40 it was surprisingly difficult to find kangaroos interested in the bags. Most had a small pile of feed that had been spilled next to them that they were similarly ignoring. Other mammal species at the park were Tammar wallabies and quokkas that had fenced off, grassy yards, short-beaked echidnas (three in the enclosure) and koalas.
Finally, birds are obviously of very little interest to Ballarat. The bird collection consists of about 3 emus, a wedge-tailed eagle, a smattering of water fowl (Black swans, a pelican, Cape Barren geese and a couple of duck species) on the large dam at the bottom of the park and a pair of brolgas, whose enclosure was empty and whose whereabouts I can't attest to.
Ballarat isn't *bad* per se, it's just made no effort to keep itself fresh and new. Fundamentally, the park is the same as it was ten years ago and very little has in fact changed since the first time I visited nearly 20 years ago. I suspect it has two reasons for existing - one to satisfy the owner's passion for reptiles, including exotics, and the other to provide just enough charismatic natives to get tourist coaches coming through for 2 hours or so as an addendum to a Sovereign Hill trip.
Yesterday my girlfriend and I made the 80 minute drive to Ballarat to visit these two parks. We allowed all day, arriving at Bird World before 11, but we were on our way home by 3, and that included a half-hour break for a quick picnic lunch at Lake Wendouree.
Bird World costs $10 for concession entry - I think it was $12 for adults. It's one of those weird little places that has clearly had some money to spend, and spent it in all the wrong places. There is an expensive and no doubt high-maintenance elevated walkway through some quite lively bushland, that probably extends close to half a kilometre in total. There is a potentially excellent planted walk-through aviary, perhaps a third the size of Melbourne's Great Flight Aviary, but relatively devoid of birds (a pair of king parrots, a small flock of cockatiels and a scattering of finches was all I saw in there).
Apart from that, the entire attraction consists of about 30 dated and extremely ugly flight aviaries, built in a single long run of aviaries. The construction is standard - wire, concrete floors, bricks up to about 40cm to discourage mice and snakes and MDF board for the back wall. Each contained 1-5 birds, most of them a single pair of Australian native parrots. In essence, it was a relatively extensive backyard aviary setup that has been opened to the public. As if looking through one layer of wire isn't enough, a second wire mesh layer has been installed 5cm in front of the other, no doubt to stop people sticking fingers into cages, but at the same time making photography, or even pleasant viewing of the birds nigh on impossible. In addition, a large number of the parrots (ie, at least 10) showed signs of feather plucking. I'm reluctant to say outright that there were mites on some of the birds, because the birds possibly infected were down in the relatively dark back sections of their aviaries.
The only saving grace was the owner of the park taking us into the largest single-species aviary there (perhaps about 15 square metres) that held a trio of red-tailed black cockatoos. One of the cockatoos is habituated to visitors and spent a few minutes perched on our shoulders. Probably a "visitor experience" I'd be happy to pay $10 for at a Halls Gap or somewhere like that... but it didn't deflect from the overall negative experience at Ballarat Bird World. We were there about half an hour, and ten minutes of that was with the cockatoo, and another 10 in the walk-through aviary.
Overall, I can't recommend Ballarat Bird World as a place to visit. The parrot collection is decent, but not really any better than at the more pleasant and wider collection at Jirrahlinga in Barwon Heads. I have seen more pleasing enclosures in backyards, too. Species list (I've probably missed one or two):
- Red-tailed Black Cockatoo
- White-tailed Black Cockatoo
- Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo
- Major Mitchell's Cockatoo
- Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
- Gang-gang
- Long-billed Corella
- Cockatiel
- Eclectus Parrot
- Regent Parrot
- Superb Parrot
- Princess Parrot
- Hooded Parrot
- Cloncurry Parrot
- Twenty-eight Parrot
- Golden-shouldered Parrot
- King Parrot
- Red-winged Parrot
- Red-capped Parrot
- Eastern Rosella
- Northern Rosella
- Crimson Rosella
- Green Rosella
- Indian Ring-necked Parrot
- Alexandrine Parrot
- Plum-headed Parrot
- Barbary Dove
- Diamond Firetail
- A couple of other species of finches
On to Ballarat Wildlife Park. First of all, this place is almost as expensive as the Zoos Victoria properties, but nowhere near as extensive as any of them. At $24 per adult, it is not a cheap day out.
Their website also makes a couple of claims that are demonstrably false. It claims to be the "only regional zoo of its kind on such a large scale." Well, if you're limiting that statement to "parks that have a decent-sized reptile collection, a smattering of native mammals and virtually no birds", then it's still pretty much a tie with the Australian Reptile Park in Gosford. As it stands, Ballarat Wildlife Park is on a *smaller* scale even than the Halls Gap Zoo only 150km away, and that's before you start looking at Gorge Wildlife Park, Mogo Zoo and Cairns Tropical Zoo. They're simply not telling the truth. Further, the website mentions that they have over four hundred individual reptiles. For all I know, that's true, but no more than a quarter of that number are on display.
Nevertheless, the reptile and amphibian collection is moderately extensive for an Australian zoo. I counted 33 species on display:
- Saltwater Crocodile
- Freshwater Crocodile
- American Alligator
- Aldabra Giant Tortoise
- Burmese Brown Tortoise
- Star Tortoise
- Eastern Box Turtle
- Pig-nosed Turtle
- Eastern Long-necked Turtle
- Rhinoceros Iguana
- Lace Monitor
- Mertens' Water Monitor
- Gippsland Water Dragon
- Frilled Dragon
- Central Bearded Dragon
- Shingleback
- Eastern Blue-tongue
- Blotched Blue-tongue
- Cunningham's Skink
- Burmese Python (albino morph)
- Rough-scaled Python
- Boa Constrictor
- Brown Tree Snake
- Arafura File Snake
- Coastal Taipan
- Inland Taipan
- Common Tiger Snake
- Red-bellied Black Snake
- Mozambique Spitting Cobra
- Siamese Spitting Cobra
- Rattlesnake (forget which species)
- One unlabelled snake that I couldn't identify.
For the most part, this park hasn't changed since the last time I visited perhaps 10 years ago. The only real addition in that time has been a nice enclosure for spot-tailed quolls adjacent to the cafe - this was probably 4-5m high, providing great climbing opportunities for the quolls, was glass-fronted and was reasonably well planted at the lower level. Of course, I didn't actually see any quolls. That was the story at the Tasmanian devils, common wombats and hairy-nosed wombats as well. When you have only about 10 mammal species, when four basically nocturnal species are no shows, there isn't much left to see.
At least 50 Kangaroo Island and red kangaroos are kept free-range across the property, and feed bags are sold for $3. I have a feeling there is no limit on the amount of bags that are sold each day, because by the time we arrived at about 12:40 it was surprisingly difficult to find kangaroos interested in the bags. Most had a small pile of feed that had been spilled next to them that they were similarly ignoring. Other mammal species at the park were Tammar wallabies and quokkas that had fenced off, grassy yards, short-beaked echidnas (three in the enclosure) and koalas.
Finally, birds are obviously of very little interest to Ballarat. The bird collection consists of about 3 emus, a wedge-tailed eagle, a smattering of water fowl (Black swans, a pelican, Cape Barren geese and a couple of duck species) on the large dam at the bottom of the park and a pair of brolgas, whose enclosure was empty and whose whereabouts I can't attest to.
Ballarat isn't *bad* per se, it's just made no effort to keep itself fresh and new. Fundamentally, the park is the same as it was ten years ago and very little has in fact changed since the first time I visited nearly 20 years ago. I suspect it has two reasons for existing - one to satisfy the owner's passion for reptiles, including exotics, and the other to provide just enough charismatic natives to get tourist coaches coming through for 2 hours or so as an addendum to a Sovereign Hill trip.
