August 21, 2025 • 13 mins
This week on iHeart Tassie, John Fabris catches up with Hobart Zoo & Aquarium owner Stuart Webster.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
My Heart, Dazzy. Welcome to the show. I'm John Fabris,
digging down this week into one of Tasmania's good news stories.
It's been unfolding in our midst the transformation of a
zoo into a world class facility Much Love Detraction in
Tasmania's South Zudu was purchased by Stuart Webster. Since then
(00:23):
a name changed to Hobart Zoo and Aquarium, lots of
money invested and massive amounts of work on the facility.
Stuart Webster, Welcome, thanks for joining us on Heart, Tassy.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. A lot's
happened since we last spoke.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
We spoke in October last year, so nearly a year ago,
and back then you'd said your vision was to create
one of the best medium size zoos in the world.
And from all accounts, you're on track.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
We are so on track, don although I always think
I should be doing more, but that's who I am.
That's not about where we're asked. The big highlight, John,
as we've opened up a brand new aquarium, the largest
in all of Tasmania. We got thirty seven freshwater and
marine tanks dedicated to room it's fully heated, in their
condition and it looks beautiful. You know, we have a
touch pool. We're keeping touch statish and feeing enemies, running
education programs in there. And we've got to change our
(01:12):
name to Hobard's Do an Aquarium.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
My knowledge of having aquariums as a kid is fish
are very touchy things to keep alive.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Things have changed, okay since we were kids. There was
a lot of work. Now we have an app on
our phone that alerts us when the water levels have changed,
when the oxygen level the nitrogen level have changed. It's fascinating.
We still have to manually add these nutrients, but at
a really interesting time. John, But there are the computer
operators these aquariums.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Some of the species that you get here are they
international or are they all local?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Big mixture. We've got some molay heels that just came in.
They're from the Queensland coast. So a beautiful dragon ear.
He's about one point two meters long, yellow with black spots,
absolutely stunning, and a white one and we have him
in our main tank when you come into the zoo,
and he's also with some beautiful lion fish and we
try to tell the story about the devastation introduced species
can do to an environment. So the line fishes and
(02:05):
introduced species and it's populated all over the world now
decimating populations. So it's a very interesting story and when
people see it they can understand it. It's all about
people buying fish in the aquarium and when they don't
want them anymore, they release them in the water, a
very dangerous thing to do.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Tell us about the bio rules that you would have
to follow. I could imagine they would be very finicky
in trying to transport fish, especially from overseas into Tasmania
and into your aquarium.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Australia has biosecurity laws that are really strict tas Mania
although part of Australia has decided about how they even
strict the biosecurity rule. And it's just huge the hoops
we have to go through, which is all I totally
agree with every one of them, but fortunately I'm not
the one doing all the paperwork for us. There's a
lot of paperwork. They literally want to know on some
of the species three generations of its breeding history to
(02:54):
find out to be guaranteed there's no bacteria, there's no
scale growth, there's no, any sort of disease can on
these fish, but you don't necessarily see that's the cunning
thing about fish. They can be sick and you not
realize that they actually goes for a lot of animals.
There's quarantine regulations. There is a list that we get
from Biosecurity of fish that we can directly import into Tasmania,
and then there's another list that have to go through
(03:14):
a quarantine process. We have the most amazing seahorses in
the world in our bays and we don't even realize it.
We have sea dragons and we have sea horses that
you'll find nowhere else in the world, and they're so delicate,
they're so beautiful, and that's why we have biosecurity, because
we're going to protect these animals.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yes, it's funny you should mention that because my daughter
has got into scuba diving in and around Hobart's base
and she has mentioned many a time she's seen these
seahorses everywhere and they're quite exotic and beautiful. And I thought, well,
there's something I never knew that we had a population
of these.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
No, we have no idea what's in our own backyard.
So that's that's to say for everybody in the world.
But yeah, when you come into the zoo. Now we
have a tank dedicated to seahorses that are local and
they grow to a thirty centimeters all so they're really cool.
Our range now is getting bigger. I mean it takes
a while. We've got some some lovely, colorful tropical fish,
and we have the freshwater fish as well. A local
person had what's going to do an oscarut, the type
(04:06):
of fish that grows very large. She had it for
four years and it out caul it the tank, and
she caught up the zoo the other day to see
if we were interested in I wasn't here, and one
of the young girls took the call and we said, well,
can you send us a picture, And we've got the
picture and you can't really tell the size or something
that's feed in person. Well, it's about forty centimeters long.
It's a huge fish. And this woman says she can't
look after a property anymore. So we've now taken him
(04:27):
on and everybody who comes to the sewers falling in
the live with himcause he has such personality. I didn't
realize fish have personalities. My navity around fish, but they do.
This guy actually follows you around and wants your attention.
Good lord. Some say he's just curious. Others say he
wants to bite you. You walk into the room, he says,
oh hi, how are you? What are you doing? It's
very cute. Six we spoke. I've put in another four playgrounds.
(04:49):
I've completely heated in their condition, the whole main building.
We have finished our cotton Top exhibit, which is just
studying beautiful South American small primate. It's got a lot
of white hair. If you remember the movie Gremlins from
back the eighties by Steven Spielberg, this is where he
got his inspiration from. Our accommodation is progressing. We had
a huge wastewater system put in and it's a sta
chiller me about the mowafe that cost me one hundred
(05:10):
and fifty thousand dollars and the public don't see it.
No one knows. I'm telling everybody who listen. So this
system has gone in so that we can have the
accommodation on site.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Well, the last time we did speak, it was a
vision of yours to have visitors staying in a hut
and looking out onto a landscape with Zebra's cheetahs and mealcats.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That's underway literally the sewerage system to be completed in
two weeks, which has been a huge ordeal, and then
we had the slabs going down for the accommodation. We've
actually gone. It's progressed as things do, so they were
going to be huts and now we're using recycled chipping containers.
We tried very hard to be sustainable here, and to
be honest, it's a real challenge. What a lot of
people do is they buy credits John just between you
and me, and that's how they call themselves sustainable. I
(05:51):
don't want to go down that path. I want to
be sincerely sustainable. So we're not going to go around
buying credits to say we're sustainable. So we're doing things
from the scratch. We're in local supply, secondhand shipping containers,
and it's working.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
A lot of people are using those shipping containers as
homes and converting them. In fact, my sister has done
exactly that, and you would be surprised how good they
look and how functional they are.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
It's really surprising, and you're not even going to know
it's a shipping container. So very soon. I won't be
telling people they're shiping intators. Those are just be my
heart because you can make them and decorate them so
that it look like shipping containers. So we're using two
forty foot and one twenty foot. The councils approved. It's
very exciting. But you're going to have an outdoor spa,
so you sit in the spa and you look at
the lions. But what I have learned John, is everything
takes a lot longer than you think it will. I
(06:37):
was hoping they'd be done by now, but it looks
like they see they won't be done until maybe November.
But you can see where they go, and you can
see the sewage system. It's very exciting.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Stuart Webster, owner of Habart Zoo and Aquarium at Tea
Tree near Richmond. This is iHeart Tassy and back with
more with Stuart. In just a moment, I heard Tassi, really,
I heard I thought to do an aquarium at Tea
Tree near Richmond. Owner Stuart Webster, our guests on iHeart
(07:07):
Tazzy this week. Stuart, the last time we spoke nearly
a year ago, you were talking about a walking exhibit
where budgies will come down and fly around you. Is
this happening, Oh, John, It's so happening.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I'm so proud of my crew. Who really is my staffed?
Like all this happened. I come up with the idea, certainly.
But we have a walk through Avery now with about
one hundred and fifty buddies in it, and at ten
o'clock or one o'clock you can go in there and
we give you an icy pole stick and it's got
some bird feed on it. You're going to have a
lot of birds land on you. It's very exciting. The
birds are so conditioned to people now that I'll actually
(07:41):
land on you just to be on you. They're so sociable,
so some of these birds are actually being bread in there.
Budgies have a very short breathing cycle, so they lay
the eggs, two weeks later they hatch and about two
weeks after that they're out of the nest. So the
buddies in there first generation and they're very comfortable with people.
And it's the photo opportunity to die for. There've been
a small business line okay in Tasmania, some say the
(08:02):
other end of the world. People post these pictures. John
and a seven year old kid. We've got a seven
year old birthday kid walking by me at the moment,
who's going into the budget. So we do a special
encounter there for birthday kids where you have your birthday
party here. You're going to the APA and just be
you and maybe a couple of other guests randomly there,
and the birds will go all over you. And it's
the highlight of some people.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
The miniature Highland cows are they particularly popular with everyone.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
We're actually negotiating the moment to bring down a mail
because we're going to breathe them to say that they're popular.
Now as an understatement to say they're going to be popular,
have baby miniature Highland cows and we que it up
in the driveway John. They're so conditioned to our guests now.
They wait at the top of the gate as you
go through barnyard and you see the bunny rabbits and
the guinea pigs, and then you see these three little
cows putting their heads out to you saying, please give
(08:46):
me some of that food. And so we have food
tokens you can buy. You come into the zoo and
you get a food cup, and the cows have figured
out how it all work. And even one little white
one has figured out if he stays to the side
of the other two and looks a little bit sad,
he gets more food. It's really funny. They they're very smart.
So if you interview me again in ten months or
twelve months time, which I hope you do, we're putting
in a whole huge playground down there. We have a
(09:08):
rope tower six meter rope tower playground down there, but
we're putting in a mega playground. It's a three hundred
thousand dollars investment actually to this playground. It's gonna be
worth every since a lot of my playgrounds they're dedicated
to people like under ten. So I'm putting in a
ninja course to ten to fourteen year olds.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
What about the holiday camp school holiday camps, they must
be just getting wonderful feedback for you.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
What actually happened is we've got a bit overwhelmed with it.
To be honest, we were just the last school holidays
we ran them and we had to reduce them because
we just got too much. The last school holidays we did,
we were busier than the Zoo's ever been before, and
we just got overwhelmed. So they went really well. But
kids love us. They get to go behind the scene,
they get to prepare food and they get to learn
(09:51):
that part of their days picking up meacatpoop dad the devil, poop,
cleaning glass, just a general day to day task you
don't really see. Most people see a zoo keeper and
they see them doing a presentation talk which might keep
us love doing, but that's really only about twenty minutes
of their day. The rest of the time is food
prep and observations. We have something called the Five Domains
which the Zoo and a prem Association of Australia has
(10:12):
come up with this guide to make sure your animals
are healthy and safe. It's called the Five Domains. And
when you do the five Domains, you measure their environment
and their spaces and their food and their interaction with
the keepers and each other, and you can decide from
that how well they're doing in captivity. So once a
week we do a five Domains assessment on each one
of our animals and it gives us a great indication
of where they're at and that all can't tell you
(10:33):
it's sick. So we teach that to the little kids
doing their school holiday program and they accident lead with
some valuable information so they can then interpret with their
own animals at time.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Okay, so are they going to continue the holiday cancer
if they just go out?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
No, no, no, no no no. This coming holidays we're
not doing them. But the Christmas holidays we're doing them.
It will be huge, it will be here and it
will sell out.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Stuart, let's talk because switch gears a little bit and
cover bird flu. Now a bit of an update here
for Hobert Zoo and Aquarium. You have been selected for
participation in a program with Commonwealth Connections.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Tell us more so. The h Time Bird too internationally
has an effective five hundred and sixty species of birds.
Australia is the only continent where we haven't discovered birds
two years, so we have an excellent opportunity to be
prepared for this. And the Labor federal government has given
the Bizarre Association, which is the Zoo and Aquarium Association
(11:30):
of Australasia, a five million dollar grant and we applied
to part of that grant to protect our quarrels, our
tranium devils and our swift parents, and we were allocated
forty eight thousand dollars to get prepared for that, and
that's about having all the right ppe here but also
changing their enclosures to have airlocks and foot bars. And
the bird flu is transmitted by feces of physical contacts,
(11:51):
so we're putting extra roofs on our enclosures and extra
walls on the outside just to protect the Australian species
which are all in a state is called vulnerable, so
they're not necessarily all in danger, but they're all vulnerable
and they're very sensitive. So down here in Tasmania we
have a front line because everybody just assumed on it
that we're all kind of guilty of this, that Bertlee
would come from the North. Berthsley's already in Antarctic. I'm
(12:13):
about our doorsteps, isn't that this? So we need to
be ready for this, We really do. It's a big
deal and only twenty three institutions across Australia received this
fundy and Hobart Doing Aquarium is one of those institutions,
and I have to say I'm incredibly proud that we
were selected, and I with all genuine humility which I
try to practice, I'm so excited they recognize in how
much work we're putting into Hobart doing aquarium. Now we
(12:34):
are now recognized as a place of the Government can
invest money to protect Australia from Birthloe.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's huge well, lots of infectious passion for what he's
creating here in Tasmania. Stuart Webster from Hobart Zoo and Aquarium.
That's our edition of I Heart Tassy this week here
in the show in full as a podcast at I
Heart Tasy, My Heart Dazzy
My Heart, Dazzy. Welcome to the show. I'm John Fabris,
digging down this week into one of Tasmania's good news stories.
It's been unfolding in our midst the transformation of a
zoo into a world class facility Much Love Detraction in
Tasmania's South Zudu was purchased by Stuart Webster. Since then
(00:23):
a name changed to Hobart Zoo and Aquarium, lots of
money invested and massive amounts of work on the facility.
Stuart Webster, Welcome, thanks for joining us on Heart, Tassy.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. A lot's
happened since we last spoke.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
We spoke in October last year, so nearly a year ago,
and back then you'd said your vision was to create
one of the best medium size zoos in the world.
And from all accounts, you're on track.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
We are so on track, don although I always think
I should be doing more, but that's who I am.
That's not about where we're asked. The big highlight, John,
as we've opened up a brand new aquarium, the largest
in all of Tasmania. We got thirty seven freshwater and
marine tanks dedicated to room it's fully heated, in their
condition and it looks beautiful. You know, we have a
touch pool. We're keeping touch statish and feeing enemies, running
education programs in there. And we've got to change our
(01:12):
name to Hobard's Do an Aquarium.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
My knowledge of having aquariums as a kid is fish
are very touchy things to keep alive.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Things have changed, okay since we were kids. There was
a lot of work. Now we have an app on
our phone that alerts us when the water levels have changed,
when the oxygen level the nitrogen level have changed. It's fascinating.
We still have to manually add these nutrients, but at
a really interesting time. John, But there are the computer
operators these aquariums.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Some of the species that you get here are they
international or are they all local?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Big mixture. We've got some molay heels that just came in.
They're from the Queensland coast. So a beautiful dragon ear.
He's about one point two meters long, yellow with black spots,
absolutely stunning, and a white one and we have him
in our main tank when you come into the zoo,
and he's also with some beautiful lion fish and we
try to tell the story about the devastation introduced species
can do to an environment. So the line fishes and
(02:05):
introduced species and it's populated all over the world now
decimating populations. So it's a very interesting story and when
people see it they can understand it. It's all about
people buying fish in the aquarium and when they don't
want them anymore, they release them in the water, a
very dangerous thing to do.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Tell us about the bio rules that you would have
to follow. I could imagine they would be very finicky
in trying to transport fish, especially from overseas into Tasmania
and into your aquarium.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Australia has biosecurity laws that are really strict tas Mania
although part of Australia has decided about how they even
strict the biosecurity rule. And it's just huge the hoops
we have to go through, which is all I totally
agree with every one of them, but fortunately I'm not
the one doing all the paperwork for us. There's a
lot of paperwork. They literally want to know on some
of the species three generations of its breeding history to
(02:54):
find out to be guaranteed there's no bacteria, there's no
scale growth, there's no, any sort of disease can on
these fish, but you don't necessarily see that's the cunning
thing about fish. They can be sick and you not
realize that they actually goes for a lot of animals.
There's quarantine regulations. There is a list that we get
from Biosecurity of fish that we can directly import into Tasmania,
and then there's another list that have to go through
(03:14):
a quarantine process. We have the most amazing seahorses in
the world in our bays and we don't even realize it.
We have sea dragons and we have sea horses that
you'll find nowhere else in the world, and they're so delicate,
they're so beautiful, and that's why we have biosecurity, because
we're going to protect these animals.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yes, it's funny you should mention that because my daughter
has got into scuba diving in and around Hobart's base
and she has mentioned many a time she's seen these
seahorses everywhere and they're quite exotic and beautiful. And I thought, well,
there's something I never knew that we had a population
of these.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
No, we have no idea what's in our own backyard.
So that's that's to say for everybody in the world.
But yeah, when you come into the zoo. Now we
have a tank dedicated to seahorses that are local and
they grow to a thirty centimeters all so they're really cool.
Our range now is getting bigger. I mean it takes
a while. We've got some some lovely, colorful tropical fish,
and we have the freshwater fish as well. A local
person had what's going to do an oscarut, the type
(04:06):
of fish that grows very large. She had it for
four years and it out caul it the tank, and
she caught up the zoo the other day to see
if we were interested in I wasn't here, and one
of the young girls took the call and we said, well,
can you send us a picture, And we've got the
picture and you can't really tell the size or something
that's feed in person. Well, it's about forty centimeters long.
It's a huge fish. And this woman says she can't
look after a property anymore. So we've now taken him
(04:27):
on and everybody who comes to the sewers falling in
the live with himcause he has such personality. I didn't
realize fish have personalities. My navity around fish, but they do.
This guy actually follows you around and wants your attention.
Good lord. Some say he's just curious. Others say he
wants to bite you. You walk into the room, he says,
oh hi, how are you? What are you doing? It's
very cute. Six we spoke. I've put in another four playgrounds.
(04:49):
I've completely heated in their condition, the whole main building.
We have finished our cotton Top exhibit, which is just
studying beautiful South American small primate. It's got a lot
of white hair. If you remember the movie Gremlins from
back the eighties by Steven Spielberg, this is where he
got his inspiration from. Our accommodation is progressing. We had
a huge wastewater system put in and it's a sta
chiller me about the mowafe that cost me one hundred
(05:10):
and fifty thousand dollars and the public don't see it.
No one knows. I'm telling everybody who listen. So this
system has gone in so that we can have the
accommodation on site.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Well, the last time we did speak, it was a
vision of yours to have visitors staying in a hut
and looking out onto a landscape with Zebra's cheetahs and mealcats.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That's underway literally the sewerage system to be completed in
two weeks, which has been a huge ordeal, and then
we had the slabs going down for the accommodation. We've
actually gone. It's progressed as things do, so they were
going to be huts and now we're using recycled chipping containers.
We tried very hard to be sustainable here, and to
be honest, it's a real challenge. What a lot of
people do is they buy credits John just between you
and me, and that's how they call themselves sustainable. I
(05:51):
don't want to go down that path. I want to
be sincerely sustainable. So we're not going to go around
buying credits to say we're sustainable. So we're doing things
from the scratch. We're in local supply, secondhand shipping containers,
and it's working.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
A lot of people are using those shipping containers as
homes and converting them. In fact, my sister has done
exactly that, and you would be surprised how good they
look and how functional they are.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
It's really surprising, and you're not even going to know
it's a shipping container. So very soon. I won't be
telling people they're shiping intators. Those are just be my
heart because you can make them and decorate them so
that it look like shipping containers. So we're using two
forty foot and one twenty foot. The councils approved. It's
very exciting. But you're going to have an outdoor spa,
so you sit in the spa and you look at
the lions. But what I have learned John, is everything
takes a lot longer than you think it will. I
(06:37):
was hoping they'd be done by now, but it looks
like they see they won't be done until maybe November.
But you can see where they go, and you can
see the sewage system. It's very exciting.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Stuart Webster, owner of Habart Zoo and Aquarium at Tea
Tree near Richmond. This is iHeart Tassy and back with
more with Stuart. In just a moment, I heard Tassi, really,
I heard I thought to do an aquarium at Tea
Tree near Richmond. Owner Stuart Webster, our guests on iHeart
(07:07):
Tazzy this week. Stuart, the last time we spoke nearly
a year ago, you were talking about a walking exhibit
where budgies will come down and fly around you. Is
this happening, Oh, John, It's so happening.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I'm so proud of my crew. Who really is my staffed?
Like all this happened. I come up with the idea, certainly.
But we have a walk through Avery now with about
one hundred and fifty buddies in it, and at ten
o'clock or one o'clock you can go in there and
we give you an icy pole stick and it's got
some bird feed on it. You're going to have a
lot of birds land on you. It's very exciting. The
birds are so conditioned to people now that I'll actually
(07:41):
land on you just to be on you. They're so sociable,
so some of these birds are actually being bread in there.
Budgies have a very short breathing cycle, so they lay
the eggs, two weeks later they hatch and about two
weeks after that they're out of the nest. So the
buddies in there first generation and they're very comfortable with people.
And it's the photo opportunity to die for. There've been
a small business line okay in Tasmania, some say the
(08:02):
other end of the world. People post these pictures. John
and a seven year old kid. We've got a seven
year old birthday kid walking by me at the moment,
who's going into the budget. So we do a special
encounter there for birthday kids where you have your birthday
party here. You're going to the APA and just be
you and maybe a couple of other guests randomly there,
and the birds will go all over you. And it's
the highlight of some people.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
The miniature Highland cows are they particularly popular with everyone.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
We're actually negotiating the moment to bring down a mail
because we're going to breathe them to say that they're popular.
Now as an understatement to say they're going to be popular,
have baby miniature Highland cows and we que it up
in the driveway John. They're so conditioned to our guests now.
They wait at the top of the gate as you
go through barnyard and you see the bunny rabbits and
the guinea pigs, and then you see these three little
cows putting their heads out to you saying, please give
(08:46):
me some of that food. And so we have food
tokens you can buy. You come into the zoo and
you get a food cup, and the cows have figured
out how it all work. And even one little white
one has figured out if he stays to the side
of the other two and looks a little bit sad,
he gets more food. It's really funny. They they're very smart.
So if you interview me again in ten months or
twelve months time, which I hope you do, we're putting
in a whole huge playground down there. We have a
(09:08):
rope tower six meter rope tower playground down there, but
we're putting in a mega playground. It's a three hundred
thousand dollars investment actually to this playground. It's gonna be
worth every since a lot of my playgrounds they're dedicated
to people like under ten. So I'm putting in a
ninja course to ten to fourteen year olds.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
What about the holiday camp school holiday camps, they must
be just getting wonderful feedback for you.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
What actually happened is we've got a bit overwhelmed with it.
To be honest, we were just the last school holidays
we ran them and we had to reduce them because
we just got too much. The last school holidays we did,
we were busier than the Zoo's ever been before, and
we just got overwhelmed. So they went really well. But
kids love us. They get to go behind the scene,
they get to prepare food and they get to learn
(09:51):
that part of their days picking up meacatpoop dad the devil, poop,
cleaning glass, just a general day to day task you
don't really see. Most people see a zoo keeper and
they see them doing a presentation talk which might keep
us love doing, but that's really only about twenty minutes
of their day. The rest of the time is food
prep and observations. We have something called the Five Domains
which the Zoo and a prem Association of Australia has
(10:12):
come up with this guide to make sure your animals
are healthy and safe. It's called the Five Domains. And
when you do the five Domains, you measure their environment
and their spaces and their food and their interaction with
the keepers and each other, and you can decide from
that how well they're doing in captivity. So once a
week we do a five Domains assessment on each one
of our animals and it gives us a great indication
of where they're at and that all can't tell you
(10:33):
it's sick. So we teach that to the little kids
doing their school holiday program and they accident lead with
some valuable information so they can then interpret with their
own animals at time.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Okay, so are they going to continue the holiday cancer
if they just go out?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
No, no, no, no no no. This coming holidays we're
not doing them. But the Christmas holidays we're doing them.
It will be huge, it will be here and it
will sell out.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Stuart, let's talk because switch gears a little bit and
cover bird flu. Now a bit of an update here
for Hobert Zoo and Aquarium. You have been selected for
participation in a program with Commonwealth Connections.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Tell us more so. The h Time Bird too internationally
has an effective five hundred and sixty species of birds.
Australia is the only continent where we haven't discovered birds
two years, so we have an excellent opportunity to be
prepared for this. And the Labor federal government has given
the Bizarre Association, which is the Zoo and Aquarium Association
(11:30):
of Australasia, a five million dollar grant and we applied
to part of that grant to protect our quarrels, our
tranium devils and our swift parents, and we were allocated
forty eight thousand dollars to get prepared for that, and
that's about having all the right ppe here but also
changing their enclosures to have airlocks and foot bars. And
the bird flu is transmitted by feces of physical contacts,
(11:51):
so we're putting extra roofs on our enclosures and extra
walls on the outside just to protect the Australian species
which are all in a state is called vulnerable, so
they're not necessarily all in danger, but they're all vulnerable
and they're very sensitive. So down here in Tasmania we
have a front line because everybody just assumed on it
that we're all kind of guilty of this, that Bertlee
would come from the North. Berthsley's already in Antarctic. I'm
(12:13):
about our doorsteps, isn't that this? So we need to
be ready for this, We really do. It's a big
deal and only twenty three institutions across Australia received this
fundy and Hobart Doing Aquarium is one of those institutions,
and I have to say I'm incredibly proud that we
were selected, and I with all genuine humility which I
try to practice, I'm so excited they recognize in how
much work we're putting into Hobart doing aquarium. Now we
(12:34):
are now recognized as a place of the Government can
invest money to protect Australia from Birthloe.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's huge well, lots of infectious passion for what he's
creating here in Tasmania. Stuart Webster from Hobart Zoo and Aquarium.
That's our edition of I Heart Tassy this week here
in the show in full as a podcast at I
Heart Tasy, My Heart Dazzy
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