Animal Planet

VERMONT, MELBOURNE, VICTORIA - 5th December 2009

My second day in Australia featured a trip to the famous Werribee Open Range Zoo, about half an hour west of central Melbourne. Zoos have really become a penchant of mine - since visiting London Zoo as a kid, I don't think I went to another one till the final afternoon of Pembroke College's infamous "WurstFest 2007" lads' trip to Berlin, when we went to see the world famous baby polar bear, Knut. Since then I've checked out all sorts - this trip alone has featured Bannergatta in Bangalore, the Monkeyland of Matheran, and most lately Underwater World in Singapore's Sentosa Island, the Singapore Night Safari, and Werribee here in Melbourne.

I'll start with the two from Singapore, as I patently forgot to give them anything more than a passing mention before departing Raffles' Island. Underwater Land is basically a giant aquarium on Sentosa Island, which is basically a giant theme park island with various pay-per-use attractions. The only other proper aquarium I've been to is that in London (and that was about 15 years ago), so I don't have much to compare it to, but as you'd expect from Singapore, it was really well done and featured all sorts of cool creatures, including the Japanese Spider Crab (see right) - a creature that (for reasons I now forget) reared its overgrown head in countless conversations on our India-Thailand travels last summer.

A cool feature is the underwater tunnel, which allows you to walk around completely submersed in water, and thus have fish of various levels of deadliness circling around you as you click photos. At certain times you really feel like you're just underwater with them - you'll be innocently standing there staring into the abyss when out of nowhere a swarm of fish bomb past you in an almighty rush to God know's where...

After checking a few more of Sentosa's sights (including an awesome downhill go-cart-come-toboggan track), we headed back to town with the plan of hitting the Night Safari.

The night zoo is located right in the middle of Singapore's city-state, which means that its as close to the middle of nowhere as is possible on an island that's only about 40km across. With word on the street saying that getting there by public transport would be something of a mission, Neha and I were lucky to get involved with an organised trip originating from her hostel - for S$40 we got minibus transfer from Little India to the zoo and back, entrance to the park (normally $25) and a safari bus ticket (normally $10). Great deal all round. You even get a cool "Animals of the Night" show thrown in for free, and get to see a bunch of cool creatures (wolves, sloths, racoons, pythons etc.) doing various tricks with their trainers.

In the grand scheme of things, it's basically the same as your average zoo - big area with various enclosures for various animals, with a train/tram/bus running along a set route through the various areas. However, the presence of darkness adds a quality to the experience that makes it unique beyond anything else I'd seen - with random rustling and growling among the overgrowth around you, every step you take is punctuated with sense of foreboding about what might be lurking around the corner, behind you, or indeed above you. Whereas, in a normal zoo, animals are essentially presented to the punters; the dark of the night, combined with walking trails that are flanked with vegetation of a density more akin to jungle than zoo, makes the Night Safari a whole different kettle of fish.

The highlight came somewhere in the depths of the jungle-zoo after we "hopped off" the safari bus to see some cats. Randomly walking up a side path, we found ourselves on a slightly raised platform overlooking a bit of a clearing. Just as we were wondering what we were looking at, leaves rustled and the silhouette of a huge mane danced over the rocky crest. Sure enough, out strutted the King of the Beasts, and before we could grab our cameras we unleashed the most deafening roar you'll ever hear in nature. You don't take photos, you don't take videos, you just stand in the stunned silence of admiration and, imagining being face-to-face with that sort of beastly fury, perhaps wet yourself a little.

But while Singapore Zoo had the novelty of the night, Werribee extracted novelty from the day. The Lonely Planet guide describes Australia as "the closest thing to an alien planet on Earth" - a reference to Australia's indigenous flora and fauna that have developed from its unique isolation from the rest of the global landmass. As recently as 15,000 years ago, creatures could freely walk across the entirety of what is now Eurasia, Africa and the Americas; it has been some 100 million years since you could walk to Australia.

It was natural, therefore, that we immediately gravitated to Werribee's Australian enclosure - a mass of native Australian wetland inhabited by natives of the island, from kangaroos to a multitude of emus to wombats and various birds. But this enclosure was unlike anything I've seen in any other zoo - the path through the enclosure had no fencing, no separation, no nothing. You were simply walking around in the midst of the animals. You can somewhat get an idea of the surreality of this setup in the first of the photos below - we were walking down the path and along marched a few emus merrily on their way. It's no nonsense zoology.

Seeing the kangaroos was damn exciting for me - the only shame was that they were rather lazy in the midday sun so just sat around under the trees. Nevertheless, we went from the Aussie enclosure onto Werribee's safari bus, which took us through American, Asian and the massive African enclosures, coming up close and personal with a whole host of beasts living it up in huge open grasslands. My personal favourite were the scimitar-horned oryx (see right), a type of antelope that is now extinct in the wild (due to being hunted for its horns). I don't really have a fancy reason for liking them - the rationale is pretty simple - they look damn cool.

But the real highlight came after close-ups with giraffes, rhinos, zebras and Harry the Hippo (and an army of excitable meercats running around like nutters). It came at 2.30pm, with the feeding of the lions. The setup at Werribee is awesome - there's a Land Rover Jeep parked on the edge of the lions' enclosure, with glass put up in line with its steering wheel (so that the bonnet is fully exposed to the lions). The lions' meat is plonked down on the bonnet of the vehicle, and the assembled spectators are treated to something that looks a little like this:

There are a couple of lions - brothers of the same litter (see below) - along with a lioness in the enclosure, and hot word is that the lionness is pregnant. If so, expect international headlines approximately next February...