The Taronga food festival:

Keeping our home open

By: Nicole Bentley

My name is Wally the Wallaby. These are my friends Polly the Cockatoo, and Rex the Crocodile. We live at the Taronga zoo.

About our zoo

We have been open for 95 years, and have housed almost every type of species since!We are able to conserve the environment through educating visitors, looking after animals, and adopting animals who need medical attention.Our mission is to secure a shared future for wildlife and people.

This weekend we hosted Taronga Zoo’s Food festival, outside the main entrance of our home.

The festival is a part of the International Crave festival, A set of food-related celebrations, which run for the month of October.

See this cool promotional poster?

My friend Nicole, who I met at the festival was in charge of hanging these up all over the zoo! I think she did a great job.

I didn’t know about it until she put these up!

Our festival wasn’t like an ordinary one. The entire festival’s proceeds went directly towards maintaining our sanctuaries in the zoo. All of the food companies who participated in the festival donated their profits to us.

And the best part of all, was that you were given some cool zoo vouchers to use inside!

The whole reason that we held such a great event, was so that we can keep our home open. Maintaining habitats that aren’t natural to Australia can be be very expensive!

Alongside the profit donations, we were also able to bring in new zoo memberships, zoo visitors, and get promoted by the press.

There was one stand in particular that merged food and animal welfare. This stand sold seafood, but only seafood that met environmental standards. Well it’s only fair that you get to keep your home too!

Later in the afternoon, we were able to have a ‘meet and greet’ with the people at the festival.Our trainer Sue told everyone about where we came from, what we ate, and what we did for fun. She even gave us some treats for being on stage. I always knew that stardom would be glamorous! Unfortunately, I couldn’t take any pictures, because my friend Gummy the Koala, and Slithe the snake are camera shy, and I didn’t want to scare them!