On 10 August 2012, i was getting close to the end of my break from the dayjob and the weather was finally clearing up again. I’d decided the night before to head down to Armadale Reptile Centre – it’s about halfway to Peel Zoo along the same route and i guessed the sunny weather would be good for catching basking reptiles in.
Like Peel, Armadale Reptile Centre is packed in pretty tight and deceptively full of stuff – and there’s lots of little surprises! An early surprise was seeing many of the old enclosure labels from Perth Zoo back in the 1980s! The fellow who runs the Centre used to work at Perth Zoo back in the day and asked if he could have the signs.
Perth Zoo’s current reptile house is pretty good (better than back when those signs were around) but there’s something to be said for specialising in one particular area. Technically, yes, there’s more perenties at Perth Zoo’s reptile house, but if you like goannas, geckos, skinks, dragons (the existing sort) and turtles/tortoises, Armadale Reptile Centre is definitely worth visiting.
Goanna-wise you can see Mertens water monitors (being climbed on by turtles), a perentie, lace monitors, sand monitors, a yellow-spotted monitor, an ocellate ridge-tailed monitor who gets his very own beam of sunlight in the afternoon and a few black-tailed monitors, one of whom lies around on a boa constrictor.
Dragons are well catered for with more species of dragon than i can remember. Western bearded, Central bearded, spiny-tailed, uhhhhhhhhhh.. yeah, that’s about all i can remember. Skinks-wise there are king skinks (one of whom helps the monitor lie on the boa constrictor), bobtails, blue-tongues and of course there’s tiny native skinks running around too – like everywhere in Perth. (We got skinks!) There are barking geckos and leaf-tailed geckos (amongst others) in the nocturnal room.
They also have a saltie – an estuarine crocodile. It’s.. well.. not the biggest crocodile i’ve ever seen but crocodiles are bloody huge anyway and you can get quite close to it. The croc shares an enclosure with the bravest turtle in the universe, as opposed to the ones next door who panic and dive into the water when they’re not climbing all over the Mertens water monitor.
Snakes are well represented – at ARC you can see death adders, tiger snakes, many variations of carpet python, dugites, mulga snakes, water pythons, a boa constrictor (with monitors and skins sleeping on top of it), a crowned snake, Collett’s snake, a red-bellied black snake, woma, black-headed pythons, etc – more than a few of the most dangerous snakes in the world on one hand and plenty of cuddly pythons on the other. I never knew there were so many varieties of carpet python. Now i do.
If you’re not into snakes or lizards, Armadale Reptile Centre still has plenty more to offer. There’s not one but two walk-in aviaries full of happy little birds: one’s inside and has a black-faced cuckoo-shrike and a rainbow lorikeet among other residents; the other is partly outside and houses parrots and wattlebirds who think nothing of landing on you and saying hi – as well as magpies who sing happy magpie songs at you then try to rip your arm hair out or steal your shoelaces. There are many cockatoos, a great finch and parakeet aviary, a pair of Australian bustards up the back. There’s a pen of red and grey kangaroos with wallaroos and a lone emu. A common brush-tail possum is guarded by a small army of tawny frogmouths and a couple of fruit bats.
Tucked away in one corner though is one completely amazing non-reptile resident. You’ll find out more about him in a few days. He’s very photogenic and was a wonderful surprise – especially when he flew down to say hello.
Also there are dingos, donkeys and a licky pony. They have no quolls (the possum is the closest beastie they have to a quoll), but they have at least two books in their shop with pictures of quolls in them. (It’s not Armadale Dasyurid Centre, one must keep one’s expectations sensible.)
Over the next few days i’ll be posting photographs from my visit to Armadale Reptile Centre. I really enjoyed my half-day there so if you like what you see, get down there and check it out for yourselves. They are doing good work and deserve your patronage! Just mind the traffic on Tonkin Highway around the airport coming back if you have to drive up through it, coz d-amn.
