Friday June 16, 2006
Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson opened Wallaroo Walkabout at the Louisville Zoo today with the help of Zoo Director John Walczak and a wide-eyed baby wallaby in a portable faux pouch. This is the first in a series of new exhibits planned to open every year for the next five years.
Wallaroo Walkabout is a walkthrough exhibit that is the first element of the $900,000 development of the Zoo’s Australian Outback Exhibit. In the next few weeks, the entire project will be ready to offer Zoo visitors a new Billabong Playabout playground, an expanded Walkabout Café and a new train station that will add an additional stop at Australia!
The Australian area will become one of the most interactive hubs in the Zoo,” said the Mayor. “First you had the wonderful Lorikeet experience. Now you can walk through a re-created portion of the Northern Territory to get eye-to-eye with some of Australia’s most interesting animals. Initially, the exhibit will have a mob of three wallaroos, four red-necked wallabies plus the ostrich-like emu with some blue-faced honeyeaters nearby.”
The Mayor explained that spring rains have only slightly delayed the entire rollout of all the features of the Australia exhibits and features. The Walkabout Café will soon have comfortable shady nooks where you can have light meals and snacks; a new playground will let the kids work off some energy; and the new train station that will offer a new stop ‘n’ board mid-zoo. And watching the nearby seal and sea lions swim and play is always a treat.
Louisville Zoo New Australia!
Exhibit Fact Sheet
The Louisville Zoo now takes you on a trek into the heart of the Northern Territory with the new Wallaroo Walkabout Exhibit filled with some of Australia’s more fascinating roos and birds. Trees, shrubs and bushes that have the look of the region also provide the 3- to 4-foot wallabies and wallaroos with browse when they want a snack and shelter when they want a little privacy. The pathways are marked by a small kick-rail fence to mark safe walking boundaries, as both of these members of the kangaroo family (or macropods) have pretty powerful kicks.
Kangaroos and their cousins the wallabies and wallaroos are hopping, herbivorous marsupials with powerful legs, short forearms for grasping and long muscular tails for battle and for balance. Australia, Tasmania and Papua New Guinea collectively are home to 70 species of the kangaroo family, ranging from the seven-foot tall red kangaroos to the tiny rabbit sized rat-kangaroos. Males are called boomers, females are flyers and babies are called joeys. Another shared characteristic of all kangaroo species is the female pouch. After an approximate 40-day gestation, the immature infant will emerge and through instinct head straight for the bottom of the mother’s pouch to latch onto one of four teats for the remaining six-month development period.
Four dramatic Australian bird species also share the Walkabout. The emu, the world’s second largest bird (ostrich is the largest), the furry looking tawny frogmouth, the blue-faced honeyeaters and the noisy kookaburra, known for their wild, laughing cry so often used for sound effects for movies.
Nearby, Lorikeet Landing offers 60 friendly rainbow lorikeets that land on visitors and will readily feed from cups of nectar. The Walkabout Café serves light meals and snacks. New landscaping will provide lots of shade for resting and relaxing while kids play in the new Billabong Playabout playground. A new train station offers full- and half-route tokens ($2.50 and $1.50, respectively) to give the zoo traveler a cooling ride. Top off a Zoo visit by watching one of the nearby seal and sea lion training demonstrations at 12:15 and 3:30 p.m. daily.
Louisville Zoo Hours
The Zoo gates are open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The extended Twilight Hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in July and August invite you to enter between 10 a.m.
and 8 p.m. ADMISSION for adults (12-59) is $10.95, seniors (60+) $8.95, children (3-11) $7.95.
LocationThe Zoo is conveniently located near the major expressways. Take I-264 to exit 14, turn north and follow the black and white Zoo signs to 1100 Trevilian Way.
Map it.