A bit of Gold Coast Birding and David Fleay Wildlife Park

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We landed at Brisbane airport a little over an hour before sunrise, around 5 AM, and got out of the airport very quickly since it was just a domestic flight. We had planned to have breakfast at the airport, but because we were so early we decided to get to our accommodation first. Although our first stop in Queensland was in Gold Coast, flights from Perth to Gold Coast were nearly double cost of the deal we got from Perth to Brisbane so when we got out of the airport we went to the next door skytrain station to get the train to Gold Coast. This took a little over an hour but was very easy and efficient and it was quite nice to look at the landscape as it slowly brightened up around sunrise.

We got off at the Nerang Station which was the closest place to where we were staying and not too far away by road but quite far by bus so we got a taxi from the station which wasn’t much more expensive than two bus tickets for the two of us and much simpler. As we drove along in the taxi I saw quite a few birds along the side of the road, mostly unidentifiable of course, but I did see the Black-backed form of the Australian Magpie, Spotted Doves, Crested Pigeons, and crows which with prior research I knew would be Torresian Crows which I confirmed with closer looks a bit later.

When we reached the hotel, of course being early morning we couldn’t check in yet, but we organised the stuff we needed for the day and left the suitcases in the luggage room so we could go out. We then had breakfast in a nearby café and headed down to the bus stop to get a bus to the David Fleay Wildlife Park. Sadly this did not go to plan. I had checked the bus number to get to David Fleay Wildlife Park beforehand and when we got to the bus stop, we saw on the timetable that the next bus was in around 15 minutes and it ran once every hour. As you can probably guess, that bus didn’t come on time, and when it was 20 minutes late we asked a bus driver on a different bus (there was no staff member at the station) who checked a folder he had and said it shouldn’t be that late but the service hadn’t been discontinued and didn’t know what was going on. A local who was waiting at the bus stop also didn’t know what was happening. When the first bus was half an hour late, we gave in to the fact that it probably wasn’t coming but hoped the next one would come, another half an hour later and it didn’t come. We gave that second bus about 15 more minutes in case it was late, but when a taxi pulled up at the bus stop it was too good an opportunity to miss. We asked the taxi driver how much he would charge to take us to David Fleay Wildlife Park (he hadn’t heard of it, but luckily I had the address) and he quoted a reasonable amount so we took him up on his offer.

Upon being asked about the quality of the bus service and how reliable it was, he replied that it was terrible, extremely unreliable, slow, dangerous, overpriced, etc. and generally awful. This was of course a ploy to get us to take the taxi but my aunt who had now become scared of the bus service decided that we would be using taxis from now on in Gold Coast. Apparently it was low season with the school holidays not yet starting, so the taxi drivers had very little work and we were able to get quite a good deal by asking the same driver to pick us up later that day and also pick us up the next two mornings that we were in Gold Coast.

Anyway we were soon dropped off at the entrance to David Fleay Wildlife Park, this was a little before 11, and we asked him to pick us up again at 4 that afternoon. I didn’t expect to spend that long in the zoo but there were lots of mangroves around that I hoped to do some birding in.


David Fleay Wildlife Park Review

The entrance to the wildlife park is very impressive with a boardwalk through some genuine mangroves leading up to the entrance building at the top.

These mangroves covered quite a large area around the wildlife park and held quite a few bird species.

The zoo itself isn’t very big with fewer than 50 species but this includes a few particularly unusual mammals with their Bridled Nailtail Wallabies, and Proserpine Rock Wallabies being the two big ones. Aside from the few unusual mammals, the other big highlight of the zoo is the quality of exhibits and the layout of the zoo as they have utilised the landscape excellently. Part of the zoo is on slightly higher land, this is dry and contains the main buildings of the zoo which are the entrance building, nocturnal house, night show area, and the amphitheatre (the bottom of which is in the lower part of the zoo) and there are a few animal enclosures in this part too, namely the Lace Monitors, Proserpine Rock Wallabies, Bridled Nailtail Wallabies, Lumholtz Tree Kangaroo, Reptiles, Tawny Frogmouth and Koalas. These enclosures all range from fairly average (reptiles) to large, well done and very nice (wallabies, tree kangaroos). The nocturnal house is also particularly good with only six species though all housed fairly nicely (Bilby enclosure was be a bit small but not sub-standard and the enclosures for other species are very nice).

The lower part of the zoo is largely wetlands with a boardwalk going around this section of the zoo and it’s all extremely nicely done. It’s all well planted with various enclosures here and there that blend in very well so there are no harsh wire fences or anything unsightly. The particularly wet marshy bits were taken up by large waterfowl enclosures as well as a medium sized lake in the centre of the zoo. It was a bit confusing to work out what was part of the captive collection and what was wild and the captive stock all seemed to be common waterfowl, though the Plumed Whistling Duck seemed to be partially captive stock joined by some wild birds and there were also wild Water Dragons and an Azure Kingfisher.

There were also particularly nice enclosures for both Salt and Freshwater Crocodiles

with a bridge separating the two, as well as Swamp Wallabies and a large walkthrough wallaby and Emu enclosure

which was also partly wetland with wetland birds.

On the other side of the wetland area there was a forested hillside which had a dingo enclosure as well as an area with free-roaming Red-legged Pademelons (of which there were also individuals in the wallaby walkthrough, and wetland area) and possibly the best enclosure of the zoo, the very large enclosure for Southern Cassowaries

which also had a small stream going through and lots of trees as well as many wild Brush Turkeys with their nest mounds in the enclosure. The cassowary keeper that I spoke to said with glee the Brush Turkeys provided good enrichment as the cassowaries would wait for the chicks to hatch and eat them when they emerged! The hatred for the brush turkeys seemed quite prevalent throughout Queensland! The final enclosure around here that I haven’t mentioned is the ‘Top Dam’ which was a largish pond with vertical flow wetlands at the back that the sign described as having vertical filtration with the water going through reed beds and aggregate and flowing downstream with the assistance of a pump through the stream in the cassowary enclosure and into the wetlands areas throughout the park. Also signed here was about wild Tusked Frogs that have moved in to the reed beds in the artificial wetlands, though of course I didn’t see anything (and it was the wrong time of year for them to be calling).

I will also mention the animal shows, there were a few that were simply a feed and talk, but there was also a night show which was based on a virtual tour of Queensland’s National Parks on a screen behind with a different nocturnal animal in each place. A few of the species in this show were shown elsewhere in the zoo (Stone Curlew, Bilby and Squirrel Glider, though the latter was shown interestingly doing some short glides) and there were a few that were only visible in the show, these were Barn Owl, Common Ringtail Possum, and most interestingly, Short-eared Brushtail Possum. The other particularly interesting show was Fleay’s in Flightin the Amphitheatre in which they fed two rescued captive Pelicans as well as lots of wild Moorhens, Ibis, and Nankeen Night Herons (it was quite surprising to see the latter species being so bold!)

as well as having a bird of prey show and, oddly, a python also featured. There was also a ‘Creature Feature Encounter’ which had a different reptile each day, a python when I was there (just walking past, not going to it properly).

So overall I think it’s an extremely good small zoo and I would say by far the best small zoo I have visited. Although it can be seen comfortably in around two hours, I spent a little over three there to spend time enjoying the enclosures, scenery, unusual animals, and wild birds.

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After leaving David Fleay Wildlife Park we had about an hour before the taxi was arriving to pick us up so I did a bit of birding along the Mangrove Boardwalk which runs along the outside of the perimeter fence of the zoo through some mangroves and also into a neighbouring patch of woodlands. Highlights from here included a Brahminy Kite flying overhead, a Royal Spoonbill amongst a flock of Sacred Ibis, Plumed Whistling Ducks, Lewin’s Honeyeater, and Mangrove Gerygone as well as a gorgeous male Mistletoebird that was just sitting still a couple of metres from me in a very exposed position. Not quite a walk-away view, but it sat there for a couple of minutes!


The taxi came on time to pick us up and we arranged for him to come at 9 AM the next morning to take us to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. When we got back to the accommodation we checked in and then went to a mall just across the road for dinner and to buy some food so we could save money by not eating out in future. Because it wasn’t quite dark yet, I added one new bird as we walked through a very small parkland area which was a Little Wattlebird. After dinner and some grocery shopping we were both exhausted because we, naturally, hadn’t slept all that well the night before on the plane so we went to bed early.

New birds seen:
Spotted Dove
Crested Pigeon
Torresian Crow
Pied Currawong
Australian Brush Turkey
Noisy Miner
Azure Kingfisher
Plumed Whistling Duck
Royal Spoonbill
Brahminy Kite
Lewin's Honeyeater
Mangrove Gerygone
Little Wattlebird

New reptile:
Eastern Water Dragon

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