Mogo Wildlife Park — Attraction in Mogo

We were a bit disappointed with our visit. I've been to Featherdale, Taronga, Monarto in SA, and Australia Zoo, and unfortunately, Mogo Zoo ranks at the bottom of that list for us.

To be fair, the staff were all lovely and welcoming, and the ticket price was quite reasonable. The layout was also pram-friendly, which made getting around easy. However, we had several concerns about the animal enclosures. Many seemed quite small, and several animals showed signs of stress—such as pacing tracks along the fences, which suggests repetitive movement due to confinement or anxiety.

One particularly troubling moment was observing the silverback gorilla reacting aggressively to visitors—he banged his hand forcefully on the glass in apparent frustration.

The signage around the enclosures was very informative, but we noticed a number of animals were housed directly opposite their natural predators. For example, the giraffes were located directly across from the lions, even though the giraffe sign explicitly lists lions as a primary predator. This seemed like a strange and potentially stressful choice.

In the feeding area where visitors can interact with deer, kangaroos, and camels, we saw a child allow a deer to eat an entire paper bag. The parent did nothing, simply saying, “Oh well.” I reported it to staff who were concerned and promptly notified keepers, but the situation could have been avoided entirely if staff were present in the feeding area. While signs are posted, visitor behavior can pose a risk without supervision.

While I believe the animals receive the basics—food, water, shelter—and the staff do care deeply, the zoo itself feels cramped and outdated in its design. If you’re looking to support a zoo that offers animals larger, more naturalistic environments, I’d recommend Monarto or Australia Zoo instead.

Some solutions to these issues - more enrichment, relocating away from predators, a permanent staff member in the feeding area for monitoring and closing 1 day a week to the public or have 1hr in the middle of the day to give the animals a break (currently the zoo is opened 7...

Mogo Wildlife Park overnight camp stay. We arrived at 3.30pm, the wonderful host Kelly met us at the entry with a very warm welcome. Kelly gave us a tour and a run-down and also took our order for dinner and breakfast. Our daughter is gluten free, so Kelly made sure everything was sorted to meet our request. The tents are great, they sleep 4. There’s a toilet and shower block a short walk away. After we had unpacked the car, at 4.30 we had a private feeding and photo with the massive Rhinos, it was fantastic. That night for dinner we had beautiful home made hamburgers on the BBQ by Kelly and her staff, the fire was on and the kids played games. ( don’t forget it’s BYO ), there’s no shops to duck off and Grab some wine / beer and chips. Just after dinner as the sun was going down the live music kicked off, OMG we had Matt Scullion play live for us for over an hour, google him and see what a talent he is. The next morning we headed off to have breakfast with the Lions, OMG!!!! Bacon and eggs rolls, fresh coffee while sitting a metre away from the Lions… the best breakfast ever. Then we had the zoo to enjoy, our only bad mark was all the animal experiences were pre-booked, so we couldn’t do what we wanted to do, my kids were shattered because that was the main reason why we choose to go there. However we did get to feed the giraffe, which was nice. Overall we had a fantastic time, food was great, campsite was clean, neat tidy, the staff were amazing, we can’t...

I last came here over 20 years ago and boy has it changed! Some great exhibits and opportunities to take part in some wonderful experiences.

The highlight for us was hand-feeding the giraffes. For the $20 we paid, I was kind of expecting we'd get to poke a piece of food through a fence and be sent on our way. I was glad to be wrong, it was awesome.

There were several platforms with stairs where the giraffes could easily lean their long necks over the fence and extract the bundles of young acacia leaves on the sticks we were handed on entry to the feeding area with their enormous, incredibly dexterous purple tongues.

We weren't rushed along at all and could take the time to enjoy the time we spent truly face to face with these beautiful, gentle creatures, handing them one branch of leaves at a time to stretch it out.

One thing that blew me away was just how massive their heads and the 'horns' (ossicones) on them are until you're really close up.

There were some nice touches to keep the younger kids interested as well, like a stamp book which you could stamp with each of the animals we saw at each of the enclosures. Sadly, a good number of these hadn't been resupplied with ink which was a bit disappointing for the young kids with us. But hey, it's during the school holiday season so completely understandable and the kids quickly moved on, of course (they're not big on sulking,...