Description of the attraction
About an hour's drive north of Sydney in the town of Somersby is the Australian Reptile Park - home to all kinds of reptiles, including snakes, lizards and crocodiles, as well as other typically Australian animals - kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, cassowaries and others. One of the important areas of the park's work is the compilation of collections of snake and spider venoms, which are then used in the production of antidotes - thanks to this, more than 15 thousand human lives have already been saved.
The reptile park was founded in 1948 at the Umina Beach Aquarium, and in 1959 it was moved to North Gosford, where it is located on the territory of the former orange garden. Nearly forty years later - in 1996 - the park moved again, this time to Somersby. In 2000, a terrible fire broke out here, as a result of which the main building of the park, along with hundreds of its inhabitants, almost completely burned down. However, just seven weeks later, the park reopened, thanks to the help of townspeople and zoos from all over Australia.
Among the main inhabitants of the park are American alligators, crocodiles, turtles, Komodo monitor lizards, geckos, iguanas and many snakes. Spiders are represented by such species as tarantula, funnel-shaped water spider, mason spider, tarantula (the largest in the world), etc. Here you can also see a huge skeleton of a diplodocus dinosaur, which the local media dubbed Ploddy.
For a long time, the "star" inhabitant of the park was crocodile Eric, who was born in 1947 in northern Australia. In the 1980s, he was found guilty of the disappearance of two children, captured and placed at Crocodile Farm in Darwin. However, there he bit off the head of two females with whom he had to live, and arranged a "duel" with another crocodile, in which he lost his hind leg. In 1989, Eric was transported on a special flight to the Australian Reptile Park, where he became a real star - his army of fans numbered more than 10 thousand people around the world! Eric died in 2007 from a systemic infection. At the time of his death, he weighed 700 kg and reached 5.6 meters in length - it was the largest crocodile in New South Wales. Today, a memorial was erected in the park in memory of Eric, and a new crocodile named Elvis settled in his cage.
