The place behind the visit.

The Hamilton family bought the Brooklands farm at Taranna in 1978 and opened the Tasmanian Devil Park in 1979. It was renamed the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park in 2006 and the Tasmanian Devil Unzoo in 2014.

The family still runs the Unzoo. In 2018 plaques were unveiled to mark 40 years since work on the park began.

• Read the history→

The Unzoo idea comes from the zoo designers Jon Coe and Ray Mendez: visitors enter natural habitats, and cages or barriers are removed or hidden. Coe’s 2007 master plan for Taranna was, the Unzoo says, the first project designed this way.

Stage one was finished in 2010, when the boundary fences came down and native habitats were planted. This page reports the Unzoo’s own account; it does not add claims of its own.

Visitors meet Tasmanian devils in four habitats, hand-feed kangaroos and wild birds, and look out over Norfolk Bay from a waterfront platform.

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 Unzoo→
• Explore the timeline→