History
The park was founded by Eric Worrell in 1948 at the Umina Beach Aquarium. In 1959, it was renamed Australian Reptile Park and moved to North Gosford.
A second move occurred in 1996, to Somersby, adjacent to Old Sydney Town.
Just past midnight on 17 July 2000, most of the main park building was destroyed when a faulty electrical wiring caused a fire. Park staff helped fire crews, but ultimately the building was lost along with most of the hundreds of reptiles and frogs that had been maintained in the building. With a lot of work from the staff, and support from the city and from other zoos around Australia, the zoo was able to re-open its doors on 9 September 2000, just over seven weeks after the fire.
As of 2010, the Park remains the sole supplier of snake and funnel-web spider venom to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) for the nation's anti-venom program. Over its 60 year history the park has assisted in saving over 15,000 lives.
Read more about this topic: Australian Reptile Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)
“Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)