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Tips for Visiting Oakvale Wildlife Park, Port Stephens

March 17, 2021 / Australia, NSW, Port Stephens, Travel / 0 comment

Tips for Visiting Oakvale Wildlife Park, Port Stephens

Meet native Australian and exotic animals at Oakvale Wildlife Park. Hand-feed roaming animals and enjoy the water park or a bbq lunch.

Oakvale Wildlife Park is 100% Australian owned and operated, and has remained a family business since opening in 1979 as a farm by the Samson family.

Set across 25 acres of bushland, Oakvale Wildlife Park strives to help teach visitors about native wildlife and how we can protect it. Over time, the family acquired various Australian wildlife species and decided to dedicate the park to wildlife conservation.

Oakvale has established multiple endangered species breeding programs where they release threatened and endangered species back into the wild for future generations to enjoy.

The park is quite large and entails a fair bit of walking to get around to see all of the animals and exhibits. The animals living at Oakvale Wildlife Park range from Australian native, domestic farm and exotic animals such as koalas, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, goats, sheep, rabbits, alligators and ostriches.

Oakvale has put a lot of thought into the activities available for guests, ensuring that a visit is a whole-day activity. There are free roaming animals to be hand fed, keeper talks, feeding shows, two fenced, shaded playgrounds, free BBQ facilities as well as an onsite cafe, plus the excellent Splash Bay Water Park which is open year-round.

Pick up a schedule when you enter the park in the morning to ensure you don’t miss any of the activities.

FEEDING STADIUM

Daily at 11.00am & 2.00pm. Bottle feed baby farm animals and an opportunity to milk a cow.

TRACTOR-TRAILER RIDE
Departing at 11.15am & 2.15pm daily – free.

SHOW TIMES
Due to the health and safety of our guests, staff and animals and adhering to strict guidelines we will not be holding keeper talks during the NSW School Holidays.

ENCOUNTERS
There is the chance to engage in more intimate and personal animal experiences by purchasing individual Wildlife Animal Encounters.

There is plenty of free parking available, and the park has pathways to provide easy access for prams, wheelchairs, mobility scooters and walkers. The Tractor Trailer Rides provide great assistance for less mobile guests. Disabled toilets and showers are located on-site and there is a JennSwing in the playground (a full support swing seat for children with physical disabilities or special needs).

The Oakvale Cafe is located inside the main entrance and serves a selection of freshly made sandwiches and wraps, burgers and wedges, plus other hot and cold options from 10.30am – 3.00pm.

Oakvale Wildlife Park is Ecotourism certified and ZAA members.

Oakvale Wildlife Park
3 Oakvale Dr, Salt Ash NSW
oakvalewildlife.com.au

Find more things to do in Port Stephens.
Find more places to stop on a Sydney to Brisbane road trip.

Up Close With Aussie Icons At Featherdale Wildlife Park

October 7, 2014 / Outdoor Play, Sydney Food, Sydney Life / 0 comment

Featherdale Wildlife Park has long been the place to take kids and tourists for an up close experience with Australian animals. Established on 7 acres of land 1953, Featherdale has evolved from a poultry farm into one of the best privately own wildlife parks in Australia. In 1972, Featherdale opened to the public as a wildlife park.

Only three years later, the park was under threat by plans to use the property for a housing commission development. The then Premier, Sir Robert Askin was presented with thousands of signed petitions stressing “the importance of Featherdale Wildlife Park” to district school children. The government saw reason and Featherdale was saved.

In the following years, Featherdale has established a successful Wildlife Education Program. If you visit during the week it’s almost impossible not to trip over groups of school kids on an educational excursion.

As well as school kids, you’ll find plenty of tourists at Featherdale for a very good reason – it’s one of the few parks where you can get up close to koalas for free. In fact, there are plenty of free roaming areas for the animals where visitors can interact with them, but where the animals can still retreat to safe areas if they’ve had enough.

Featherdale has a large collection of Australian animals in particular, such as wallabies, kangaroos, wombats, Tasmanian devils, bilbies, echidnas, cassowaries and koalas. They also have an extensive bird collection. I did feel sorry for the birds, as I do for all caged birds, but I tried to give the park the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they were hand-raised rescues and not able to be returned to the wild.

Featherdale is a great place to visit in any season. Lots of trees give plenty for shade for hot summer days. There are several areas with benches to eat a packed or bought lunch. If you plan to buy lunch, there is a kiosk with basic food and snacks, with a large undercover eating area next to it.

Miss E’s favourite parts of the park were the free roaming wallabies and the barnyard animals. She took a particular liking to a white goat and followed him around, only agreeing to leave the barnyard when the goat knocked her over with his little horns not once, but twice. The girl certainly is persistent.

If you arrive in the morning or stay for the afternoon you can watch some of the animal feedings and talks (check out the schedule in advance).

While the Featherdale trip was a special outing for Missy E, I also found myself enjoying it more than I had expected I would. The animals were all very healthy looking, with clean enclosures and plenty of food, water and shelter. There were plenty of staff caring for the animals, constantly feeding and checking on them. While of course a life in the wild is preferable for native animals, if an animal isn’t able to live in the wild and needs to live out its life in captivity, Featherdale is a pretty nice place to be!

Featherdale is a bit pricey, but we got a good deal by using an Entertainment Book voucher to get two-for-one entry. I’d definitely suggest trying to find a discount voucher to save on costs.

Featherdale Wildlife Park
217-229 Kildare Road,
Doonside, Sydney NSW 2767
(near Blacktown) Australia
Phone: 02 9622 1644
Hours: Daily 9am-5pm
Prices: Adults $29, child (3-15) $16, Student $22.50, Senior $20, Family (2 adults/2 children) $82
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Symbio Wildlife Park; Helensburg, NSW

February 11, 2014 / Helensburg, Southern Sydney, Sydney Food / 3 Comments

Nestled in the quiet suburb of Helensburg lies Symbio Wildlife Park, a tiny zoo that makes for a great afternoon of wildlife encounters — particularly for little kids. Symbio boasts “we’ll get you closer”, and there are indeed opportunities to get up close to lots of animals. The grounds are spacious and well-kept, and the animals all healthy and happy looking. No sad depressed animals in tiny enclosures here.

We arrived just in time for the koala talk. It was an informative session with lots of great info that I didn’t know about the koala. It was a little over the heads of the littler kids though — better for older kids and adults, as the tiny tots were getting restless. The talk usually ends with the opportunity to touch a koala, but our koala was a newbie and people-shy, so no pats for our sad toddler, despite her repeated exclaimations that “he’s so cuuuuuuute!”.

The biggest hit for all of us was the walk-through kangaroo enclosure — a large paddock filled with kangaroos. We had bought bags of animal feed at the entrance so we were ready to get up close and personal with some Aussie icons. The kangaroos were extremely docile — I would imagine because they’re so used to lots of people being around them. They were very happy being touched and would munch the grass off your hand, tickling your palm with their teeth. We showed Miss E how to feed them carefully, and pretty soon she was able to feed them on her own.

The goats also were excited to be hand-fed — they were in an enclosure that they were desperate to escape in their enthusiasum for our grass-like food. These super friendly goats were actually very gentle, and E was able to feed them without loosing any fingers.

There were actually a lot of animals roaming wild, but they kept their distance from us (good call, toddlers are notorious animal-chasers). We spotted peacocks, ducks and cockatoos cheerfully roaming the grounds.

As well as having standard farm animals, the zoo is home to a few exotic creatures like a Sumatran tiger (who was MIA when we visited his enclosure), red pandas, crocodiles, adorable marmoset monkeys and meerkats.

A surprise standout was an albino echidna — something none of us had ever seen before.

Symbio Wildlife Park is a great way to spend a few hours entertaining kids. I would recommend lunch at a nearby fave, The Palms Cafe, for delicious food before exploring the park.

Symbio Wildlife Park
7-11 Lawrence Hargrave Dr,
Helensburgh NSW 2508
Open daily, 9:30am-5pm
Phone: 02 4294 1244
Prices: Adults $27, children 3-15 years $15.