Western Sydney’s Featherdale Wildlife Park buys Mogo Zoo
For almost 30 years Sally Padey lived her dream of owning her own zoo. Now, the owner of Mogo Zoo at Batesman Bay has decided the time is right to call it a day – selling the South Coast institution to Featherdale Wildlife Park.
NSW
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Forget the movie We Bought A Zoo, Sally Padey built a zoo — and now she’s sold it.
After waking to the sounds of lions roaring and gibbons howling for three decades, Ms Padey has decided to retire to a quiet life in the country.
She sold her Mogo Zoo, near Batemans Bay on the South Coast, one month shy of its 30th anniversary to Western Sydney’s Featherdale Wildlife Park.
After collecting one of Australia’s most extensive private collection of exotic animals including giraffes, rhinos, zebra, tigers, two prides of lions and primates, Ms Padey, 60, wasn’t easily convinced to sell.
“It wasn’t for sale to some rich person who just wanted to brag they have a lion in their backyard,” she said.
Featherdale Wildlife Park zookeeper Chad Staples has spent three nights a week for the past 15 months at Ms Padey’s home on the zoo grounds, hashing out mutually agreeable sale terms over a glass of wine and the din of animal calls.
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Not only will he take control of the 200 animals on the site, Mr Staples will also live in Ms Padey’s house.
Even after the ink has dried on the historic sale, the pair still roam the grounds so Ms Padey can point out eccentricities of certain spider monkeys or make her successor promise not to chop down particular trees she’s fond of.
“I never put the zoo on the open market, even though I would have got more money,” Ms Padey said.
“I truly believe I can walk away and Chad will look after my zoo.”
In between stints at Mogo, Mr Staples has secretly taken exotic animal handling courses at San Diego Zoo, to avoid rumours of the impending sale circulating within the local zoo industry.
“These animals are Sally’s family, it’s not just a business to her,” Mr Staples said.
“She’s poured her heart and soul into this place and I feel a huge burden of responsibility to make sure her legacy lives on.”
After dropping out of school aged 15, Ms Padey bought, renovated and sold houses during the 1980s property boom to save enough to buy the 26-hectare zoo site.
She said she sent two letters for a year to the Zoological Parks Board of NSW before she was awarded a licence.
By her own admission, Mogo Zoo has consumed Ms Padey’s life and very often the animals’ welfare came before the welfare of her family.
“We worked bloody hard in the beginning, we never had any money or time,” she said.
“I can remember being given 12 big bags of carrots, which were starting to go off, and I chopped and topped and peeled them to feed to the animals and we ate roast carrots and carrot soup for weeks.
“Another time the abattoir rang me said: ‘We have some sides of beef you can have for the cats’ and when I got there, the chap at the abattoir showed me how to cut fillets and we ate steak for a month.”
She is well known in the area as quite a character, notorious for having lion cubs wandering around her house.
Ms Padey said her daughter Casey, 36, become especially fond of a cougar named Tom, who would sleep in her bed.
Ms Padey claimed they used to take the cougar for walks along the beach under a full moon, which started the rumours of a big cat in Batemans Bay.
A teary Ms Padey knows she will regret leaving but her body can’t cope with the stresses and strains of the seven-day-a-week job and she wants to catch up on lost time with her daughter at her horse stud at Cowra.
“I’ve loved this zoo with all my heart, with every fibre of my being, but it’s time to go because this place will end up killing me,” she said.
Featherdale Wildlife Park will offer annual passes granting access to both zoos.