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:
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)