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An Apollonaut travel guide
The country behind the park.
Ngarrindjeri Country, a planned city that was never built and a sanctuary that became a safari park offer several ways into the story of Monarto.
On this page
Ngarrindjeri 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 Ngarrindjeri Elders of the land where Monarto Safari Park stands.
The story of the park is one recent chapter in a much longer history of this land.
A planned city
In the 1970s, Don Dunstan’s state government planned a new city at Monarto, east of Adelaide, to take pressure off the capital, and farmland was compulsorily acquired for it.
The plan was abandoned, and much of the land it had taken is now part of the safari park.
From sanctuary to safari park
Monarto was established in 1983 as a breeding area and sanctuary for endangered species, closed to the public, and was open to visitors by 1993. Zoos SA, the not-for-profit conservation charity that also runs Adelaide Zoo, runs it today.
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.
