Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
Moments in a longer story.
Selected milestones in the story of SEA LIFE Melbourne.
On this page
An aquarium on the Yarra
These dates describe the place you can learn about here. They are not a company timeline for Apollonaut.
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17 January 2000
The aquarium opens
The Melbourne Aquarium opens beside the Yarra, in a building shaped like a moored ship.
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28 November 2008
Penguins arrive
An expansion reopens with king and gentoo penguins and a new entrance at Flinders Street and King Street.
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2012
Merlin Entertainments
Merlin Entertainments buys the aquarium’s owner-operators.
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September 2013
SEA LIFE Melbourne
After an $8 million refurbishment, the aquarium relaunches as SEA LIFE Melbourne.
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2014
A new shark
The aquarium hatches a brown-banded bamboo shark through in-vitro fertilisation.
Follow the stories behind the dates
A timeline is a beginning. The longer history introduces the place and its animals; the sources below provide further context.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.