Qualla: David Fleay Wildlife Park

David Fleay Wildlife Park: Introduction

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shiftchange, CC0. In November 1943, in a purpose-built tank he had designed himself, David Fleay watched something no one had ever achieved before: a baby platypus, "Corrie", born in captivity. More than eighty years later, his is still nearly the only name attached to that feat. The naturalist who managed it spent the second half of his life on a flood-free slope of the Tallebudgera valley in West Burleigh, building enclosures by compass so each one caught the morning sun, and turning a few acres of Gold Coast bushland into one of the most important wildlife sanctuaries in the country.

Image: Shiftchange | CC0

David Fleay Wildlife Park: The Man Who Bred the Unbreedable

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. David Howells Fleay was born in Ballarat in 1907 and trained as a teacher and zoologist before his obsession with native animals took over. At Melbourne Zoo and then the Healesville sanctuary he racked up a string of scientific firsts — the first captive breeding of emus, the taw...

Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

David Fleay Wildlife Park: A Sanctuary, Not a Zoo

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0. Banned by the Victorian government from charging the public to see his private collection, Fleay and his wife Sigrid moved north and, in 1952, settled on the Tallebudgera estuary. He bristled at the word "zoo." "It's a place where the animals are kept in conditions as close as po...

Image: Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE | CC BY-SA 2.0

David Fleay Wildlife Park: Milking the Deadliest Snake

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0. Some of Fleay's most consequential work involved animals most people would run from. At Healesville he had kept tiger snakes on an island and milked them for antivenom. His connection to the taipan, one of the most venomous snakes on earth, is woven into one of Australian science...

Image: Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE | CC BY-SA 2.0

David Fleay Wildlife Park: The Tortoise and the Legacy

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DiverDave, CC BY-SA 3.0. For decades the park kept a particularly famous resident: Harriet, a Galápagos tortoise long associated with Fleay, who lived an extraordinarily long life before later moving to Australia Zoo. Fleay's honours piled up — an MBE in 1960, an honorary doctorate from the University of...

Image: DiverDave | CC BY-SA 3.0