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An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the zoo.
Kaurna Country, an acclimatization society’s zoo and its heritage buildings offer several ways into the story of Adelaide Zoo.
On this page
Kaurna Country
Zoos SA acknowledges that the Country on which it stands always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land, and pays its respects to the Kaurna Elders of the land where Adelaide Zoo stands.
The story of the zoo is one recent chapter in a much longer history of this land.
A zoo of 1883
The South Australian Acclimatization and Zoological Society founded the zoo on land granted by the government in the parklands north of the city centre. It opened on 23 May 1883, and three generations of the Minchin family directed it until 1940.
Today the zoo is run by Zoos SA, the trading name of the Royal Zoological Society of South Australia, a not-for-profit conservation charity.
Heritage buildings
Five of the zoo’s buildings are on the South Australian Heritage Register, among them the front entrance on Frome Road and the former Elephant House, built in 1900.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
