History
Founded by Rex Neindorf, a former reptile handler, the centre opened in January 2000, and features over 100 reptiles of 30 different species. Reptiles from the centre have featured in National Geographic Magazine, Wild Relations - Natural Born Cheats on ABC, an American Visa television commercial, New Zealand's The Bounty Hunters television show on TV2, Steve Irwin's Great Escapes on Discovery's Travel Channel and Animal Emergency on Channel 9 Australia. Directors including Frederic Lepage have filmed nature documentaries there.
The centre added a large Saltwater Crocodile exhibit in 2002, and in 2006 an extension funded by the Australian Tourism Development Program opened, featuring fossils which trace the evolution of reptiles from 200 million years ago to the present.
The centre is adjacent to Billygoat Hill, which is Crown land. The centre, which is privately owned, reports that efforts to convince the local police and the Lands Department to increase security on the hill - a spot frequented by youths and itinerant drinkers - have been unsuccessful.
Read more about this topic: 2008 Australian Zoo Killings
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“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)