Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the visit.
A reptile keeper’s ambition, ten hectares in Ballarat East and a mob of free-roaming kangaroos offer several ways into the story of Ballarat Wildlife Park.
On this page
A park in Ballarat East
Greg Parker opened Ballarat Wildlife Park in February 1985 on ten hectares of land on the corner of Fussell and York Streets in Ballarat East. His own reptile collection became part of the park.
The park describes itself as family-owned, and as a place for conservation, education and recreation.
Residents remembered
Patrick, a wombat rescued from his dying mother’s pouch in 1989, could not be returned to the wild and lived at the park until April 2017. He became known far beyond Ballarat.
Crunch, a five-metre saltwater crocodile, arrived in December 2013 with a female named Bella. He is fed at weekends and in the school holidays.
The park today
More than 100 kangaroos roam free, and visitors meet koalas, wombats, Tasmanian devils, dingoes, emus, little penguins, meerkats, reptiles and the tigers of the park’s tiger sanctuary.
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.
