Paul’s Place Wildlife Sanctuary

Unlike your run-of-the-mill zoos or animal parks, Paul’s Place Wildlife Sanctuary is home to rescued wildlife and domestic animals. At Paul’s Place you can cuddle a koala, handfeed cheeky lorikeets, pet a possum, bottle-feed a baby wallaby or get all wrapped up with a snake around your shoulders!  Needless to say, the experience at Paul’s Place is an interactive one, hosted by Paul himself who has been taking in abandoned or needy animals since childhood.

Promoting personal hands-on encounters, Paul’s Place operates under the mantra of educating visitors to care for all creatures great and small. Like a somewhat obscure version of Noah’s Ark, Paul’s Place residents currently include five koalas, 22 emus, 32 kangaroos and 2,000 sheep across some 1,200 acres of land, churning through 10 tonne of oats every year. That adds up to a lot of time, effort and passion for our furry, feathered, scaly friends!

Walk on the wild side with possums, pythons and ponies

The humble sanctuary – which has clocked up 34 years of guided touring – isn’t externally funded, so visitor admission fees of $AUD15 for adults and $AUD10 for children go directly to the care of the animals. Admission costs include pony rides, sheep shearing demonstrations, animal feeding and all other interactions excluding koala holding, which costs an extra $AUD3.

A visit to Paul’s Place can take anywhere from one to three hours. There is no set structure and group visits are usually quite small, so you are guaranteed a special encounter with the animals and warm hospitality from Paul and the volunteers. Generally, the sanctuary runs on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday at lunchtime, with school holidays seeing longer operating hours. It’s a good idea to phone ahead and book in your time to say hello to Alice the Camel, Giggles the Kookaburra and Wilma the Black Cockatoo.