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ANDROO KELLY – TROWUNNA WILDLIFE PARK
If someone like Androo Kelly had been around early last century the Tasmanian Tiger might well have been saved from extinction.
Kelly, a gifted youth worker, radically changed career direction nearly 20 years ago, to become one of Australia’s best known authorities on some of the unique wildlife that inhabits Tasmania.
He is the operator of Trowunna (`heart-shaped home’ ) Wildlife Park at Mole Creek in centre the state’s famous North & North-West wilderness and caving region.
It was the simple, bare foot freedom of working in the bush with the animals at Trowunna that enticed Kelly away from youth work in the April of 1986.
Earlier, his outstanding work with troubled young people in Tasmania and Victoria had earned him a place on a Commonwealth Secretariat in India and for six months in 1984 he was part a 33-member contingent of youth workers from 16 nations, developing a Commonwealth youth programme.
When the project finished Kelly spent 15 months travelling through Tibet and China before heading home to Tasmania.
Kelly, whose grandfather and great grandfather were well-known horsemen around Richmond, grew up with a love of animals often bringing home injured ring-tailed possums and potteroos to rehabilitate on the family’s orchard and dairying property `Rookwood’ on the Huon.
He was even named Kang by his sister Merris and later changed the spelling of `Androo’ to reflect his love of the creatures of Tasmania’s forests, mountains and button grass plains.
When he arrived at Trowunna it belonged to Judy and Peter Wright.
``The place was ahead of its time because of its genuine commitment to rehabilitating wildlife, a new concept for humans. The Wrights had a range of Tasmanian animals and a nocturnal house that took up 14 acres of the 50 acre property,’’ Kelly said.
``I put a lot of my very personal experience of growing up with animals into place as I worked at conditioning the animals and rearing them so we could develop a successful animal husbandry programme.’’
Today, with Kelly as its owner/operator, the park has over 200 animals across 28 species and occupies 35 to 40 acres with a 20-acre buffer zone of lush native forest on either side.
Its credentials have expanded.
The Park’s zoologist, Chris Coupland, is currently being considered as the presenter of an animal programme on the Discovery television channel, while Kelly has made a pilot programme called Devil’s Diary, also for the Discovery network.
``I used a lot of media in my youth work _ I developed work-skill video productions and regularly had artists from the video clip programme Beatbox come along and work with young people,’’ Kelly said.
He has been involved in the production of 21 nature-based documentaries, one of which attracted major, international awards.
He is also the Captive Wildlife industry’s spokesman on the Tasmanian Government’s steering committee to try and understand the facial tumour disease that has appeared in the state’s Tasmanian devil population during the past 2 years.
He sees his park as a ``giant classroom’’ and a place of ``living education’’ where his unconditional love of the wildlife has created a very personal experience for visitors to Trowunna.
``The greatest pleasure is to see people leave here really happy,’’ Kelly said.
Trowunna Wildlife Park is open seven days a week, 364 days a year, excluding Christmas Day.
It is open between 9am and 5pm and from 8am to 8pm during January.
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