Macropods Poster

The fenced enclosures at Waratah Park occupy a clearing within 12.6 hectares of bushland at Duffys Forest, pressed up against the boundary of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. Timber posts and wire runs mark out the paddocks where kangaroos and wallabies now move freely through the grass. The infrastructure around them is practical and unadorned: the remnant fencing of a wildlife park that held animals for public display across more than three decades of operation. Waratah Park opened as a public wildlife park in January 1970, a year after television production wrapped on Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. The series, produced by Fauna Productions between 1967 and 1969, had been filmed across 91 episodes on the same Crown land. Animals on display at the park's opening included kangaroos, koalas, dingoes, emus, and wombats. The site operated under successive tourism operators, including Waratah Park Pty Ltd from 1976 and Waratah Park Earth Sanctuary from 1995 to 2000, before the business failed and the park closed to the public in 2006. By 2010, all wildlife had been removed from the site and the lease cancelled. The enclosures stood empty. In late 2012, Joan Reid, a volunteer macropod coordinator for Sydney Wildlife, identified Waratah Park as a viable rehabilitation site. Construction of new infrastructure began in 2013, and some of the original tourism-era enclosures, including two runs of approximately 40 by 60 metres, were repurposed for macropod recovery. The facility operates entirely on donations, with no government funding at any level. Ownership of the site transferred to the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council on 28 August 2014 under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983. Waratah Park was listed on the NSW State Heritage Register on 27 February 2015. This photograph, made in 2017, records the enclosures as they stood: functional, quiet, and occupied again.