a crappy day at melbourne... » Melbourne Zoo

a crappy day at melbourne...
20-04-2007

a little update on the rigo the gorilla situation - the ape grottoes have been closed off to the public to allow rigo to utilise all the grottoes without being on display (that said he wasn't given access to them all when i was there, he was in the same ****** one on the far left as always.

if they are going to continue to used them for the time being (and i cant see them demolishing them anytime soon and probably not in poor rigo's lifetime) then the very least they can do is finally do a refurbishment to improve the life of the lone last inmate..

i feel like starting a "free rigo" campaign.

overall the zoo was noisy and gave me a headache. i understand the screaming primary school kids, i'll even tolerate pimplefaced smelly highschoolers screaming jokes about monkeys arses in an attempt to woo some metal-mouthed giggling twat of a girl.

but the "doof doof" rap music that echoed from whatever dumb function was taking place in the middle of the zoo was enought to piss me off and make me leave.

the elephants and orangs was same as always. the gardens had grown a bit whih was nice. almost all of the transplanted palms however certainly looked like the dought had taken its toll. many of them have definately died. its amazing how many extra large palms i have seen transplanted around melbourne zoo over the years only to die within a few months. either this is just a reflection of the usual success rate with transplanting palms or the melbourne zoo horticulture department have a knack for killing them off. suffice to say the drought certainly hasn't helped. my favorite was the demolished palm in the macaw aviary. what a waste!!
i reserve my judgement...for now.

the elephants had virtually no grass anymore. the grass had actually held up rather well until the new arrivals. the waterfall and moat in the orang exhibit has obviously been fixed as it was full and in operation.

apparently the old elephant exhibit is being used for bird shows. its been grassed and transplanted palms (looks like they actually bothered to water these ones though) and garden beds have made it look all pretty. however this happened AGES ago and to this day i haven't seen a single bird show in effect, nor are the times of such advertised anywere such as on the zoo map.

the tamarins have been given a buffer garden and railing between them and the path. which is good since i had observed many a teenager getting far too close and swealing their heads off at the poor primates while stuffing their faces with dim sims.

the tapir exhibit has had trees planted at the viewing point, making it very clear the malayan tapir exhibit is closed for good.

all in all it was a pretty negative visit. i still think overall the zoo is a great zoo. i think overall the animals are well cared for and in decent exhibits. the gardens are mostly lush and green. but the downside to all this money being poured into mega-exhibits such as the asian rainforest and soon-to-be-built seal exhibit is that decades pass with virtually not even a refurb for other inhabitats.

whilst i understand that the seals definately are in desperate need of a new pool and i guess every zoo has its ugly points - i'm personally starting to get bored of seeing that empty weed-infested pygmy hippo exhibit, those sustandard ape grottoes and smelling those stinky, rusted concrete baboon cages.

20-04-2007

you must have been having a bad day pat the day you went, lol
but then i wasnt blowm away with WPZ either...sometimes it seems like the zoos needa good 'mc-clean', spit and polish before school holidays start.
interesting that the turf in the ele padocks has disappeared, so too has the grass in wild asia at taronga. in the future i guess more money will need to be spent again on soil remediation...in the wild wetlands exhibit at dubbo i was quite pissed because despite costing a bomb the planners/horticulture gurus couldnt get the turf right to withstand the commpaction of just one rhino! so now the multi million dollar exhibit has been closed for moat works and returfing. i mean it looks good, but you just think theyd try to get it right the first time!
in the future i think wild asia should completely ditch grass and the zoo should just lay down soft mulch all over the upper paddock. i mean, the moat couldnt possibly get any dirtier!
melbourne zoo is an amazing place, but i jut got the impression from my visits there that, like you said pat, some areas of the zoo looked really neglected. in fact, there were really strong contrasts in the design styles throughout, i guess it obviously reflects the sporadic nature of funding grants. and taronga too certainly has its bad days, i remember feeling really pissed off visiting whilst wild asia was under construction. now though that its opened i think taronga is consistently OK.

20-04-2007

The pigmy hipo enclosure with the hipo looked alright but the empty one beside it did look neglected. Did they used to have another hipo in it?

I did not know the elephants had grass I thought it must have started like that.

As I come from an area which looks like the native exibit at the moment I thought all the the gardens looked good, but I am used to everything dead, dry and dusty at the moment.

20-04-2007

lol
actually your remark, monty, about the australian section at melbourne made me laugh, its supposed to look drought affected. although i think the colony of bel miners living around the area might be causing stress/die back in some of the gums.
the exhibit opened last year, around the time of the commonwealth games. i actually liked it, and yeh, when trail of the elephants only had 2 animals spread out across all 3 exhibits it was quite lush and green. hopefully some rain might help it recover. as for the hippo enclosure, it will probably just sit empty for another few years is suppose. a geographically incorrect (but i guess tamarins dont live in african rainforests either) alternative might be to put alligator or crocodile in there and make use of the glass. the zoo could always get away with it rebranding the precinct as a generalised tropical forest, at leas tuntil they get another pygmy hipppo!

23-04-2007

i have no idea if they plan to aquire another hippo. if it was a priority you would have thought they would have by now! i still can't believe the major zoos missed/passed up the opportunity to by mareeba. sure, they would have been stuck with a large amount of surplus lions (and no doubt perth would not have taken back any of their "dumped" bears or macaques) but the bonus would have been all the unaquireable animals. even if the antelope were of no value, at that stage there was two otherwise unaquirable breeding pairs of pygmy hippos, a group of unrepresented common hippo and and other genetically unrepresented animals such as tigers, cheetah and two bull rhino...

melbourne cant keep crocodiles outdoors becuase of the low winter temperatures and short of a species of tapir (and ours is permanatly off display) i cant see the exhibit useful for much else because of the design. its actually one of melbournes best exhibits and it was much better from a visitor perspective when two hippo were on display. i sincerely hope they manage to aquire another from one of the other zoos in australia.

i did have a bad day. the fact that i had a splitting headache mustn't have helped.

23-04-2007

Maybe the young pigmy hippo born revently will eventually make it's way to Melbourne.

23-04-2007

its a nice thought. i only hope that mareeba eventually gets there act together to be accepted by ARAZPA and that not just the pygmy hippos, but all the animals are co-ordinated into the regional breeding plans.

23-04-2007

marreba is a tough 1, not following arazpa orders and stuff, its not up to standards

and think about it, there is very little paper work to go about with many antelopes, so we dont know ho is mated with who, so we have to be careful not to stuff up our pedegrees

23-04-2007

Hey, does anyone know what ended up happening with the giraffe and zebra oh and tapir that the were bought by mareeba... i heard they were being kept at mary river station but that's a game hunting lodge... many deer from tipperary have been shot, hope the giraffe, tapir and zebra didn't face the dame fate. From what I heard, only one stallion and a mare of six zebra made it out of tipperary

24-04-2007

there was a plan from mary river to open a commercial hunting ranch- like texas but mt govt said no

the animals are still there, huge debate

24-04-2007

The Zebra at Tipperary were the rare Grevys species, I think they were the only ones of their species in oz are they at Mareeba?.

24-04-2007

No Zebra at Mareeba. Mary River already is a game hunting lodge zoo boy, but currently water buffalo and "pest" animals are hunted there. hmm might post this in a new thread as mentioned by someone earlier.