Taronga Zoo: From Entertaining Elephants to Educational Seals

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 When I was a kid, a day out at Sydney’s harbourside Taronga(𝕒) Zoo meant, among other things, a ride on one of the zoo’s star attractions, it’s fleet of African and Asian elephants. In fact right up until 1976 you could still do that. Prior to the Seventies, Taronga in keeping with the zoological zeitgeist of the era was fundamentally about entertainment, exposing the droves of punters who made the trek to the zoo on Mosman’s Bradley’s Head to a taste of exotic and hitherto unseen fauna. In addition to the elephant rides, kids were entertained by monkey circuses, miniature trains and merry-go-rounds.

Riding the elephant

The thinking all over the world about the purpose of public zoos started to shift from the late 1960s. The zoos’ focus gradually switched to scientific research, conservation and education. So, zoo displays and performances like the seal theatre at Taronga began lacing its shows with conservation messages and raising public (and especially juvenile) awareness of maritime issues facing sea creatures, while at the same entertaining audiences with feats of great aquatic dexterity by the zoo’s resident sea mammals.

“Seals for the Wild”

Another of the surviving early Taronga buildings 

Elephants were such a key feature of the early zoo. “Jessie” the elephant, the zoo’s top draw card and her “housemate”—brought across the harbour by moonlight ferry from the zoo’s original location in Moore Park for Taronga’s 1916 opening(𝕓)—had their own dedicated pavilion, the “Elephant Temple”, a structure still extant at the zoo though no longer the home of Taronga’s beloved pachyderm residents. 

The elephants’ bath in the Temple: a highlight for  visitors in the early days

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(𝕒) meaning “sea-view” in the Aboriginal language 

(𝕓) transporting the zoo’s “denizens of the wild” to their new home was a tricky logistics exercise, carried out for safety in the wee hours of the night when humans were off the streets. Those few city dwellers who did observe the spectacle of the animals crossing remarked on how Jessie (and the giraffes) made a wondrous silhouette set against the night sky

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