Dubbo’s first animal park predates Taronga Western Plains Zoo

A long-closed zoo within the metropolis centre of Dubbo is fondly remembered as a region of fun and curiosity, with its ultimate discontinuance introduced about by stricter animal welfare regulations.

The Rotary Park Zoo, constructed on the beginning of the 1960s, turned into once in Victoria Park, reverse essentially the most neatly-liked council chambers. 

Internal turned into once a unfold of native and uncommon animals, with the long-established conception for the park driven by volunteers, in conserving with native learn officer Simone Taylor.

“It turned into once segment of an even bigger mission where they did a group of upgrades to the park, in conjunction with building the begonia home — which most other folks would recognise this day — the wishing effectively, after which they constructed a zoo,” she talked about.

Animal parks beget been no longer an uncommon see in most regional cities all the contrivance in which thru the closing century, but altering animal welfare regulations saw the beginning of the tip for animals being saved within the metropolis centre in 1984.

“In reality apt one of many points turned into once that they did not beget honest files for how the animals would reach into the zoo and what had took place to the animals after they left the zoo,” Ms Taylor talked about.

One native remembers transporting an emu to the park after elevating it from a chick.

Helen, a caller to ABC Western Plains Breakfast program, talked about her family raised the emu on the family farm at Warren sooner than it inevitably got too giant and turned into once donated to the zoo.

Transporting the bird took some ingenuity, she talked about.

When council decided to end the park in 1984, it’s understood the animals beget been donated to various parks and presumably the newly constructed Western Plains Zoo.

Ms Taylor talked about there beget been few shots within the council archives of the Rotary Park Zoo, something she would would want to review alternate.

“Or no longer it’s barely tricky to search out articles, because of the it be predominant to return to the long-established newspapers,” she talked about.

“[Articles] indicated the zoo turned into once roughly constructed from scratch but there might maybe be not any such thing as a range of detail about the historical past.”