Taronga Zoo elephants Pak Boon, Tang Mo depart for Monarto Safari Park in South Australia
After more than a year of training to prepare them for the big day, Taronga Zoo’s last remaining elephants have donned their seatbelts for the 22-hour journey to their new home in South Australia.
NSW
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After more than a year of training to prepare them for the big day, Taronga Zoo’s last remaining elephants have donned their seatbelts for the 22-hour journey to their new home in South Australia.
Female Asian elephants Pak Boon, 25, and Tang Mo, 31, set off on Tuesday morning on their 1300km vehicle-assisted migration, which will end with them joining a new herd at Monarto Safari Park, southeast of Adelaide.
A zoo spokeswoman said zookeepers had spent more than a year “crate training” the elephants so the animals would voluntarily walk into large containers, where they were buckled in.
“The crates were then lifted via crane onto awaiting trucks and departed Taronga Zoo Sydney,” she said.
The process of coaching the elephants has been long and arduous, with keepers periodically coaxing the pair into their containers with hay as a form of reward-based training.
Upon entering the containers, the elephants had braces fastened to their ankles to serve as support for the bumpy journey.
The departure of Pak Boon and Tang Mo marks the first time in more than a century Taronga has been without elephants.
Taronga’s first elephant, Jessie, first arrived in Sydney in 1883 on a boat from Calcutta.
Jessie lived in the zoo’s former site at Moore Park until 1916, when she caught a ferry across the harbour to the current Mosman location.
The elephants are due to arrive in South Australia on Wednesday.
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Originally published as Taronga Zoo elephants Pak Boon, Tang Mo depart for Monarto Safari Park in South Australia
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