Wild Life Sydney Zoo

Some visitors to Sydney don’t realise that the city is home to two terrific zoos – there is Taronga Zoo on the north side of Sydney Harbour and the award-winning Wild Life Sydney Zoo right in the heart of the city. Wild Life Sydney Zoo is a walk from Rydges World Square, located on the city side of Darling Harbour, next to the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium and Madame Tussauds.

It’s quite an amazing experience to be effortlessly taken to a number of iconic Australian habitats to encounter, up close, some of our most loved and feared animals. There are interactive displays, informative and entertaining daily shows, feeding sessions, guided tours and walk-through habitats including Koala Encounters, Kangaroo Walk-About and Butterfly Tropics. You can’t walk through the Kakadu Gorge habitat – best to leave that to Rex, the huge five-metre saltwater crocodile – but you can view Rex both above and below the waterline.

Everyone loves a koala and there are plenty of koalas to love. You can gran a coffee or lunch at the Koala Rooftop Café and, on weekends, get there early for a Koala Breakfast (from 7:30am) – you can beat the morning crowds, enjoy a hot breakfast in a bush setting and experience an informative talk plus a photo opportunity.

Visitors can also hand-feed Princess, the beautiful Southern Cassowary. The cassowary is the third tallest bird in the world and is known as the world’s deadliest bird – and there are only 1000 left in the wild. The Butterfly Tropics habitat has, of course, tropical butterflies as well as a diverse range of animals living in the carefully created area including birds, fish, frogs, turtles and vividly coloured pythons. You might also get the chance to pat a python and take home a photo.

Devil’s Den is home to Topsy, the Tasmanian Devil and Wallaby Cliffs is home to Ringo, the celebrity baby wombat. Ringo shares the habitat with other critters including Bluey, the yellow-footed rock wallaby, a couple of kookaburras, a family of blotched blue-tongued lizards and Stewie the quokka.

Some of the weirdest and most wonderful creatures like bats and bilbies venture out at night when all the other animals have gone to bed and the Wild Life Sydney Zoo has created a Nightfall Habitat so you can check them out. Many nocturnal animals feed on bugs and visitors can visit Bugs Garden to explore the amazing world of creepy crawlies like spiders, beetles and bees.  Did you know that bugs have been around five thousand times as long as humans?

And you may want to hop aboard the zoo’s Wild Flight. This is a self-propelled ride where kids and parents can take a flight through the attraction’s aviary.  Riders will see kangaroos from the sky, glide past princess parrots, other feathered friends, the endangered Grey-headed Flying Foxes and even take a daring journey over Rex the crocodile.

Wild Life Sydney Zoo is open from 9:00am to 5:00pm daily and here is a link to the official website for more information.