Melbourne Healesville Sanctuary Review

I was staying with my relatives and they recommended going to the Healesville Sanctuary as opposed to the Melbourne Zoo. The Healesville Sanctuary focuses on Australian native animals and that was what I wanted to see.

It was a bit difficult to get here but took less than an hour from downtown. Here are the instructions from the Healesville Sanctuary website:

• Train to Lilydale: catch a train from the Melbourne city centre to Lilydale Railway Station, travelling on the Lilydale line.
• Bus to Healesville: from Lilydale Railway Station you need to catch bus 685 to Healesville, and then a connecting bus (686 towards Badger Creek) will take you to Healesville Sanctuary.

We went on a weekday, so it was not crowded at all. Here is the map of the sanctuary:

Below are some pictures from around the park:

Of course the main attraction here were the kangeroos. Visitors get to walk around their area so you can get very close to them if you like. If you see the third picture down, they can balance themselves with their tail, which is pretty insane.

The next major attraction here was the koala. As you can see in the below picture, you can get very close to them.

Koalas can often be found sleeping in trees as well. In the second and third picture, you can see a young koala hanging on to his mother, which was pretty cute.

The next stop was inside the nursery where they treat and rehab sick animals.

Below are some of the native birds of Australia.

The next exhibit was the Tasmanian Devil. There is a virus in the wild that grows on their face and spreads through direct contact. The devils are very social animals and often share food and rub noses, so it spreads very easily among the community. The viruses causes large boils to form on their face, which eventually prevents them from eating and it eventually causes the death of the devil. There is a conservation effort going on in Melbourne and Sydney to keep as many non-infected devils in captivity as possible to prevent it from spreading to every Tasmanian Devil.

By the way, they look nothing like Taz from Warner Brothers and they don’t spin to get around.:

Below are some additional pictures from around the sanctuary.