Moonlit Sanctuary Night Tour

Moonlit Sanctuary is a great place to visit during the day but it’s called moonlit Sanctuary for a reason, it’s amazing night tours.

These night tours are done in a structured format with a staff member leading you through and giving great facts some of which I didn’t even know like how Wombats have incredibly hard rumps and lure predators speeding in their den and instead of retreating they let the predator crash into their rump breaking their skull. What a cool defence mechanism!

The tour has a variety of animals you won’t see during the day including but not limited to

Squirrel Glider*
Long Nosed Potoroo
Yellow Bellied Glider*
Feathertail Glider**
Australian Owlet Nightjar**
Eastern Bettong***
Rufous Bettong***

* means that the animal may be seen during the day under special circumstances.

** means that we ran out of time to see the animal as we spent too long in a couple areas

*** Currently off exhibit

You enter through the gift shop at dusk having beautiful views of the wetlands lake and free ranging roos, wallabies and padamelons.

There’s also Dexter the Coastal Carpet Python in the gift shop.

When the tour starts you are encouraged to put insect repellent on which is supplied(WARNING: please put it on the swarms of insects here are insane) and you will definitely need it. You will then be directed to a building not open for the night public during the day.

Our instructor Bianca then brought out BHP the healthiest black headed python I’ve seen and this is the second time I’ve seen him the first being in the python show when I went in the day in September.

BHP was well behaved and Bianca talked about him for a long time and we got to hold him! 6 kilograms of pure muscle moving through is impressive.

There are other tanks in the room which are not part of the night tour but you are allowed and encouraged to look at holding Shingelback, Central Bearded Dragon, Carpet Python, Green Tree Frog and Growling Grass Frog (EN). After that you are given a dim lantern and you start the night tour by seeing Mary the sanctuary’s female common wombat get a ball of enrichment. It took a long time for her to get going (probably at the expense of the feathertail gliders) but she came up and started tugging the tied ball of carrot and other treats. It was cute and like I said before Bianca was giving helpful facts on the species of wombat however we didn’t see the zoos Southern hairy nosed wombat.

From the common wombat enclosure I peeked the other side and finally after years of off displays and hiding I finally saw my first Regent Honeyeater.

While we were walking Bianca told us that the sanctuary had lots of rats due to predator proof fencing and abundant food. Unfortunately she didn’t know what types they are.

Here’s my description

Long tail like a black rat
Colouration of a Brown Rat
Habits of a bush rat (shy, secretive and has homes in tree stumps)
Size in between a Bush Rat and a Black Rat.

Was not an anechtinus

I do know that Bush Rats do occur outside of Melbourne in areas but they are rare.

Back to the tour and we walk on the path and and suddenly a KI kangaroo comes in, then another one, all of a sudden all five of the zoos Kangaroo Island Kangaroos come and we feed them. After comparing the zoos KI’s to Eastern Greys it baffles me how they are considered a subspecies of the Eastern Grey and not a full species. They are a lot smaller, Body shape is more fluid and their fur is super soft compared to Eastern Greys, that’s not mentioning their habits and much more placid and skittish behaviour.

Then we went to the Koala walk and I have to say, this is the first time I’ve genuinely enjoyed watching Koalas as some of them were active and eating.

Next we head inside the Kangaroo walk to see a pen which we stand in and there is an enclosure for Long Nosed Potoroos which we enter. An assortment of fruits, mealworms and other foods are given tho the shy potoroos which are super cute and we also got to pat them after they finished eating. One note that most likely needs to be dealt with is Wild Brush Tailed Possums coming down from the trees and bullying the smaller and more vulnerable captive potoroos and eating some of their food.


Next is probably the highlight of the tour after walking around the walk, we see what during the day time looks like a normal enclosure for Bush Stone Curlews and Tawny Frogmouths (their names were pop and pip), but during the night the Yellow Bellied Gliders stay near their best box but more importantly over five squirrel gliders jump and climb in the enclosure. But all of a sudden we are told that we go inside the enclosure and feed the Squirrel Gliders with little cups of Nectar with some added nutrients in it. On most nights it probably easier to feed the gliders as tonight there were extremely protective Bush Stone Curlews, the female sitting down, and when she got up, there were super cute two day old chicks. They moved to the other side of the enclosure. I got to feed a squirrel glider and even pat ones super soft fur.

Next we walk past an enclosure and much to my surprise a red kneed (red legged idk) stilt, another species which constantly eludes me in Zoos.

Next are the Spot Tailed Quolls (not eastern), being extremely active compared to normal allowing me to get a good look at them until of a sudden I heard an insane cry coming from the other direction, then it keeps persisting and gets louder.

We then move on to the culprit of that weird and interesting cry and it’s Tassie Devils, running and fighting (not intensely), it was a sight to behold seeing Natrual sounds and behaviour from Tasmanian Devils. Bianca then chucked pieces of chicken into the enclosure and they went wild zipping in and out. It was crazy.

On our way to one of our last stops we saw a Ringtail Possum climbing up a tree which is apparently not super common at the park.

Then we saw another Brushtail possum but this one had a baby on its back. Cute.

Unfortunately this put the owls on high alert however we got to see the barn owls silent flight. Both the Barking and Barn owls were calling too.

and that was the end of the tour..... wait what’s that buzzing noise that keeps circling my lantern, why am I super itchy, why are their clouds of insects every where, oh wait.

That’s the one big negative but also a positive at the same time.non disease carrying Mosquitos mean a healthy environment with plenty of food for predatory insects which are food for other animals but on the other hand they completely swarm around and bite you leaving with tons of itchy and swollen spots, If I was younger back when I had a mosquito allergy and really attractive blood to mosquitos I probably could have died even with repellent on due to the billions of the mosquitos. I even one time when I was younger had to go to hospital for the night and have tons of anti histamine from a single mosquito bite on the head.


Despite those two negatives being the mosquitos and the lack of time leading to missed animals, This tour gets an undisputed 10/10 from me because of its diverse species as well as the enjoyable atmosphere and excellent tour guide but most importantly you get unforgettable experiences with animals that don’t normally have encounters. Feeding Animals like squirrel gliders and long nosed potoroos are an amazing experience

 

Oops

 

This is contradictory - do you mean they are more placid, or more skittish..?