The place behind the visit.

The naturalist Eric Worrell opened the Ocean Beach Aquarium at Umina Beach in 1950, moved his collection to Wyoming near Gosford in 1958, and opened Eric Worrell’s Australian Reptile Park there on 3 October 1959.

Ploddy the dinosaur, put up in 1963, is thought by many to be the first of Australia’s “big things”. The park moved to Somersby in 1996, and Ploddy moved with it.

• Read the history→

Worrell began supplying snake venom to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in the early 1950s. Today the park says it is the sole supplier of the raw venom used to make antivenom for Australia’s land snakes and for the funnel-web spider.

The park says more than 25,000 lives have been saved thanks to the programme. It describes its conservation work, including with Aussie Ark, on its own website; this page does not add claims of its own.

The park recovered from a fire in July 2000 and reopened within weeks. Today its collection runs from the Komodo dragons and the alligator lagoon to kangaroos, koalas and Tasmanian devils.

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 the history of the park→
• Explore the timeline→