Most Sydneysiders have caught the ferry across to Taronga at least once, usually as a kid with a packed lunch, and we all know the view from the top of the hill. What a lot of people don't know is that the zoo started life on the other side of the harbour, on a swampy patch of Moore Park where Sydney Boys High and Sydney Girls High stand today. In 1916, in the middle of the Great War, the whole lot was packed up and moved. Lions, bears, monkeys, kangaroos, hundreds of birds and one very large elephant named Jessie all made the trip across Sydney to a new home on the bush slopes of Bradleys Head at Mosman.
This page follows the story from the start. It begins with the Zoological Society and the old Moore Park zoo, then the 1916 move and Jessie's early morning walk through the city, the opening of Taronga Zoological Park on 7 October 1916, and the years since. Those years brought gorillas and pandas, the Sky Safari, the open-range zoo at Dubbo and the conservation work Taronga is known for today. There's a timeline near the end, some notes on visiting, and the full list of sources at the bottom.
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The Zoological Society and Billy Goat Swamp
It all goes back to 1879, when the NSW Zoological Society was formed. It later became the Royal Zoological Society of NSW. Animals weren't the first thing on its mind. Its early aim was the "introduction and acclimatisation of song birds and game", which was a very colonial idea of making the bush feel more like England. Before long, though, the members turned to something more ambitious: a proper public zoological garden for Sydney.
The City Council gave the Society a patch of Moore Park known, not very grandly, as Billy Goat Swamp. The sources tell this part slightly differently. Museums of History NSW says the Society leased 7 acres and that this was increased to 12.5 acres in 1881. Centennial Parklands says Council granted the 7 acres in 1883. Either way, the zoo began on about seven acres in Moore Park and grew from there.
Charles Moore, Director of the Botanic Gardens and a member of the Society, laid out the grounds. He had been looking after a small menagerie at the Botanic Gardens, and he moved those birds across to the new zoo. Animals started arriving in 1883, and the Zoological Gardens at Moore Park opened to the public in 1884. It was Sydney's first public zoo.
Two elephants: Jumbo and Jessie
Every self-respecting zoo of the time wanted an elephant. An elephant drew the crowds, and the rides brought in the money. By the end of 1883 Moore Park had two of them, and it's worth getting them straight because people mix them up all the time.
The first was a male, a gift from the King of Siam, who arrived in July 1883. He was named Jumbo, after the famous African elephant in P. T. Barnum's circus. The second was a female bought from the Calcutta Zoological Society. She arrived in Sydney on 30 November 1883 aboard the steamer Newcomen, which tied up at the Central Wharf at Millers Point, along with a number of mongooses. Two keepers, or mahouts, came with her. The papers gave their names as Parbuck and Eliback. Her name was Jessie, and she's the one who became a Sydney legend.
Getting her from the wharf to Moore Park didn't go to plan. The keepers meant to take her up in a van, but no sooner was she coaxed inside than she "walked out again before the doors could be fastened, brandishing [her] trunk and looking rather put out". They got her there in the end, and she was soon "quietly munching sugar cane" in a shed made ready for her.
Nobody really knew how old Jessie was. The Daily Telegraph of 1 December 1883 gave her age as "sweet seventeen". Museums of History NSW says she was believed to be about eight when she arrived. When she died in 1939 the Sydney Morning Herald called her 77, which would fit neither. The honest answer is that her age was a guess from the start.
What everyone did agree on was her temperament. Jessie was gentle and would "lie down, roll over, and do a great many other things at the word of command". People climbed steps to a platform and sat on a howdah, a saddle with bench seats on either side. Parbuck showed the crowds how a keeper mounted her the traditional way, with a foot on her trunk and a hand on each ear while Jessie gave a gentle hoist. She was so well known that "more hide than Jessie" became Sydney slang for a cheeky or brazen person.
Life at the Moore Park zoo
By the early 1900s Moore Park was a proper day out. There were refreshment rooms, gardens, picnic shelters, music and animal rides. There was an orangutan, a polar bear, "cages full" of lions, tigers and leopards, plus bears, dingoes, hyenas, a flock of flamingos, emus and songbirds. Kerry & Co's photographers came by with their big glass-plate cameras, which is why lovely portraits like the lion at the top of this page survive.
The site had real problems, though. It lived up to its old name and flooded. It was dusty and windswept, and the trams and traffic rattling past were noisy. In 1902 bubonic plague was found among the animals and the zoo closed for four months. Museums of History NSW says it was the wallabies, Centennial Parklands says kangaroos, and buildings were burnt and many animals lost. The zoo grew to 15 acres in 1905, and in August 1906 the Council extended the lease for another 14 years, but it had clearly outgrown the place.
Attitudes were changing too. People were starting to object to animals kept in small barred cages on concrete floors with little sun. When the Society's president, Charles Hedley, later made the case for a new zoo, he called the Moore Park grounds "mean and unhealthy" and "not worthy of this wealthy State, of this great city".
A new idea: a zoo without bars
The man who changed everything was Albert Sherbourne Le Souef. He was appointed secretary of the Zoological Society in 1903, a job that was really the zoo director's role. Le Souef was young and full of ideas. In 1908 he and Dr Robert Todd went on a world tour of zoos and came home inspired by Carl Hagenbeck's zoo at Hamburg. There the animals lived in open-air enclosures without bars, kept apart from visitors by moats and ditches instead of cages. Le Souef wanted the same for Sydney.
Choosing Bradleys Head
Plenty of sites were put forward. The list included Long Bay, Upper Lane Cove, Harris Park, Tempe, Little Coogee Bay, Rockdale, Queens Park, Maroubra, Bondi and Vaucluse. Le Souef had his heart set on Bradleys Head, on the northern side of the harbour. It had bushland, rocky slopes, harbour views, and the city was only a short ferry ride away.
In 1911 Acting Premier William Holman announced the government's policy of "preserving the foreshores of Sydney Harbour for the people". At that same event Charles Hedley put the case for part of Mosman's Ashton Park to be set aside for a new zoo. It worked. In 1912 the site was chosen and more than 40 acres were reserved. Wikipedia gives the grant as 43 acres (17 hectares), with a further 9 acres added in 1916. It was all handed to a new body, the Taronga Zoological Park Trust.
What does "Taronga" mean?
Taronga is an Aboriginal word, usually given as meaning "beautiful view". You'll find that meaning on Wikipedia and on Taronga's own material. Some sources say "water view" instead, and some link the word to the Cammeraygal people, the traditional owners of the Mosman side of the harbour. I couldn't find a primary source that settles it, so I'll just say it's usually translated as "beautiful view". Anyone who has stood at the top gate and looked back at the city will agree it fits.
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Building the new zoo
Taronga was planned around the land rather than flattening it. The enclosures were built from natural and artificial rock to keep as much of the bushland as possible. The seal ponds even had imitation ice floes. Le Souef made plasticine models and worked out how wide the moats had to be from how far each animal could leap. As he put it, there would be "nothing between the public and the animal but air space".
As each enclosure was finished, animals were put in to test it. The rhesus monkeys happily obliged by escaping, so the walls were built higher. One of the earliest features still standing is the Rustic Bridge, opened in 1915 over a natural gully. Its stone-studded walls were meant to look like an Italian grotto.
1916: How to move a zoo
Now to the part I most wanted to tell: the move. It happened over about six months in 1916, at the height of the First World War. Hundreds of animals and birds left the old cages at Moore Park and were walked, carted or carried through the streets to the harbour, then ferried across to Taronga. The newspapers called it a "miniature Noah's Ark".
Sydneysiders certainly noticed. One report described "mournful yells from hyenas, angry roars from lions and tigers, good-humored snorts from gigantic elephants hauling a veritable menagerie of wild beasts confined in cages" disturbing "the early morning serenity of Sydney streets". Centennial Parklands says Moore Park closed in July 1916, when the Taronga trustees took over all the staff and animals, believed to be 177 animals and 329 birds. By the end of 1916 Taronga held 228 mammals, 552 birds and 64 reptiles.
Jessie's walk across Sydney
The star of the move was Jessie. At around 4 tons (over 4,000 kilograms) she was by far the biggest animal to make the trip, and she did most of it on foot.
In the early hours of Sunday 24 September 1916, Jessie walked out of the Moore Park gates for the last time. Her home of more than 30 years was behind her. With her were three keepers, led by the head keeper, Mr Miller, and behind them in a car came Dr Robert Todd, one of the Taronga trustees. They led her along Dowling, Flinders, Bourke, Woolloomooloo and Palmer streets, across the Domain and down Macquarie Street to Bennelong Point, where the Opera House stands today.
It wasn't easy on her. Her feet got sore on the hard road, and she grew nervous in places, but "a pat on the shoulder, or a reassuring grip on her ear" kept her going through the narrow streets and over the tram lines. Along the way a horse pulling a milk cart took one look at her and bolted. You can only imagine the milkman's face.
At Bennelong Point a vehicle ferry, a punt, was waiting. This is where I want to be clear, because the story often gets muddled. Jessie wasn't lifted in a crate or towed on a barge. She walked on board the vehicle ferry herself. The Evening News of 25 September 1916 reported:
"With hardly any hesitation, Jessie walked on to the punt, and ran her trunk over the outer gate, as if inquiring whether she would remove the obstacle. A word from her keeper, and she stood as still as a rock during the trip down the harbour."
The trip took about 35 minutes. Two photographs of that morning survive, and they're my favourite pictures on this page. In the first, Jessie stands on the deck with her keepers in their caps and coats beside her.
Getting off was the tense bit. The pontoon at Taronga dipped alarmingly under her weight, but her keepers talked her through it and "she finally tip-toed across the pontoon and on to the wharf". By 7 am she'd been shown into her new home, an elephant house built to look like an Indian temple.
One small warning about these pictures. The caption on one of them on Wikimedia Commons says Jessie was "a gift from the King of Siam". She wasn't. That was Jumbo. Jessie was bought from the Calcutta Zoological Society. It's an easy mix-up, and it shows how the two elephants have blurred together in Sydney's memory.
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NSW State Archives holds more than 100 glass-plate negatives of the final days of Moore Park and the early years of Taronga, and they've been digitised. Museums of History NSW used them in the "How to Move a Zoo" exhibition at the Museum of Sydney from 20 November 2021 to 24 April 2022. Many of the best pictures of the animals in transit are in that collection rather than on Wikimedia Commons, so I've listed where to find them in the sources.
The opening of Taronga Zoological Park
Before the official opening, the government offered every schoolchild in metropolitan Sydney a free day at the new zoo. It was partly advertising, but it also gave families a bit of joy in a grim wartime year. Between 100,000 and 120,000 children, with their mothers and little brothers and sisters, came over the following months. One reporter watched them charge up the hill, "spilling peanuts as they ran in a wild contest to reach the monkey cages first". He compared the scramble, in the way people did in 1916, to the charge up the hillside at Gallipoli.
The official opening came on 7 October 1916, when Premier William Holman opened Taronga Zoological Park before a crowd of invited guests. Taronga puts the attendance at about 1,200.
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Getting there by ferry
From the very beginning the ferry was the way to get to Taronga, and it still is. Ferries brought crowds straight from Circular Quay to the wharf below the zoo. One of the photos below shows the ferry Kirawa at the zoo wharf in October 1916, the month the zoo opened. Families walked up the hill from the water, and later generations caught the tram or bus to the top gate.
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The early years
Jessie went straight back to work at Taronga, giving rides to generations of Sydney kids. She'd already been a hard worker at Moore Park. In six months of 1916 her rides there brought in £146 15s, about $15,000 in today's money, and she carried more than 35,000 people at a penny a ride. At Taronga the rides carried on for decades.
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Other attractions came along. The Aquarium opened in 1929 and quickly became one of the most popular parts of the zoo. The old photos show refreshment rooms, lawns and picnic spots, and Taronga became the place Sydney families went on a fine weekend.
Goodbye, Jessie
Jessie died at Taronga on Tuesday 26 September 1939, almost 56 years after she first came ashore at Millers Point. Sydney was genuinely sad to lose her. The next day the Sydney Morning Herald ran a photograph from her last birthday party and noted that more than 1,500,000 children had ridden on her back. That's a lot of happy kids from one gentle old elephant.
Sir Edward Hallstrom and King Kong
In 1941 Sir Edward Hallstrom was appointed a trustee, and he launched a review of exhibit design and animal welfare. In 1956 an Act of Parliament made the Taronga Zoological Park Trust a body corporate, which let it run more like a business.
Then in 1959 came Australia's first gorilla. Five-year-old "King Kong" arrived from California and moved into a purpose-built "Gorilla Villa". He was a sensation, and attendance went up 26 per cent to 914,000 in 1959–60.
Not every idea of that era aged well. In 1964 the seal pool was converted to hold dolphins, to compete with the marine parks of the day. Taronga's own history admits the dolphins did badly, with an average lifespan of less than a year.
A new era: from entertainment to conservation
The big turning point came in 1967. A critical review set Taronga on a new path, with scientific conservation, education and preservation taking priority over entertainment. New exhibits designed to hide the buildings in the landscape followed: the Platypus House (1968), the walk-through Rainforest Aviary (1970) and the Nocturnal House (1972), plus new waterholes.
The 1970s brought the zoo's first master plan (1970) and its first dedicated veterinary building (1971). Volunteers started in 1974, and the Education Centre and Friendship Farm opened in 1976. That same year the elephant rides and the merry-go-round stopped, and so did the miniature train and the monkey circus. For anyone who grew up riding an elephant at Taronga, that was the end of an era. It was the right call, though, and it marked the new focus on animal welfare. A new Seal Theatre opened in 1979, with the seals showing natural behaviours instead of tricks.
Taronga Western Plains Zoo, Dubbo
Bradleys Head is beautiful but steep and cramped, and big plains animals like elephants and antelope need room. As far back as 1965 Sir Edward Hallstrom wrote to the government about land for a "Living Zoo". Taronga's director Ronald Strahan took up the idea, and in 1972 the government announced Australia's first full-scale open-range zoo on an old World War II army camp just outside Dubbo.
Western Plains Zoo opened on 28 February 1977. It was officially opened by the NSW Governor, Sir Roden Cutler, and cost about $2.8 million. It was the first zoo built in Australia in 60 years, the first since Taronga itself, and the first designed on open-range lines, with concealed moats instead of fences. Today it's Taronga Western Plains Zoo, and you can drive, cycle or walk its 5-kilometre circuit.
The 1980s: Sky Safari and pandas
In 1982 Taronga imported thirteen Przewalski's horses for a breeding program, at a time when the species was close to extinction. The Australian Registry of Wildlife Health was founded at the zoo in 1985.
1987 was a big year. The Taronga Aerial Cabin Ride opened to carry visitors from the wharf up the steep hill to the top of the zoo. We came to know it as the Sky Safari. The same year a breeding program for the greater bilby began, and five joeys were born in its first six months.
Then for the Bicentenary in 1988, China lent Australia two giant pandas, and Taronga had them for a season. Taronga's own figures say 623,390 people came to see the pair in just three months. In 1989 Taronga became a founding member of the International Rhino Foundation, and it opened the first conservation and research centre in any Australasian zoo.
A zoo for a new century
In 2000 a 12-year, $250 million master plan began, with most of the money going to Taronga. The Backyard to Bush precinct opened in April 2003. Also in 2003, Taronga became the second zoo in Australia to breed the platypus.
The biggest and most argued-over project was bringing elephants back. Under the plan Taronga took five Asian elephants from Thailand for breeding and conservation. Activists in Thailand blockaded the trucks taking them to Bangkok's airport on 5 June 2006, but the elephants came anyway and moved into the Wild Asia precinct, which had opened in July 2005, in November 2006. At 3.04 am on 4 July 2009, Thong Dee gave birth to Luk Chai, the first elephant calf born in Australia. A second calf, Pathi Harn, whose name means "miracle", was born on 10 March 2010, two days after the zoo had announced he was probably dead. The Great Southern Oceans marine precinct opened in April 2008, and the same year the two zoos became Taronga Conservation Society Australia.
The elephant chapter at Bradleys Head has since closed. The last two elephants at Taronga Sydney, Pak Boon and Tang Mo, left in April 2025 for Monarto Safari Park in South Australia. Their old exhibit became the Rhino Reserve. Its first resident is Hari, a greater one-horned rhinoceros born at Dubbo in October 2021 and moved to Sydney in December 2025, who shares it with three water buffalo.
One hundred years
Taronga turned 100 in 2016 and celebrated with a parade through the city streets, a nice echo of Jessie's walk a century earlier. The 160-seat Centenary Theatre opened, and the zoo made a ten-year commitment to ten "Legacy Species": the bilby, koala, marine turtles, platypus, regent honeyeater and southern corroboree frog at home, and the Sumatran elephant, rhinoceros and tiger, sun bear and Sunda pangolin overseas.
More new precincts followed. Tiger Trek opened in August 2017. The Taronga Institute of Science and Learning, known as "The Hive" for its honeycomb design, was officially opened on 16 October 2018 by Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The Wildlife Retreat, where you can stay overnight, opened in October 2019, and the African Savannah precinct followed in June 2020. In August 2021 the lioness Maya gave birth to five cubs, the first lion litter at the zoo in 18 years. The Nura Diya Australia precinct opened in 2023, and the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Centre in June 2024.
Bushfires, lockdowns and a lion scare
During the Black Summer fires of 2019–20, Taronga staff treated injured wildlife and gave displaced animals a safe place. When COVID closed both zoos, Taronga launched Taronga TV online. In 2021 ten greater bilbies bred at Dubbo were released into Sturt National Park, more than a century after bilbies were declared extinct in NSW.
Then there was the morning of 2 November 2022. At 6.40 am five lions, a male and four cubs, got out of their main enclosure through a hole in a fence. None got past the secondary fence, nobody was hurt, and the lions were back in their enclosure that morning, with one cub tranquillised. It made headlines around the world, but it never came close to being a disaster.
The Sky Safari: gone and coming back
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The Sky Safari was updated in 2000 and gave us more than 30 years of gondola rides over the giraffes with the harbour spread out behind them. It closed on 31 January 2023 at the end of its working life. A $105 million replacement was approved by the NSW Government despite local objections about taller pylons, tree removal and harbour views. Sydney Zoo even lodged an objection on competition grounds. On 23 April 2026 Taronga announced that construction had begun. The new Sky Safari keeps the original 900-metre route, its bigger gondolas will take prams, wheelchairs and groups of up to ten, and a new lower station will link it better with the ferry wharf. Taronga is aiming for a late 2027 reopening, while other reports give 2027–28, and the zoo stays open during the works.
Conservation at Taronga today
The zoo that started out showing off lions in cages is now mostly about keeping species alive in the wild. A few recent examples from Taronga's own news in 2026:
- Northern corroboree frogs: In May 2026 about 700 Taronga-bred frogs were released into Brindabella National Park, the largest release of the species yet. The insurance population at Taronga was set up in 2010 and holds about 370 adult frogs.
- Southern corroboree frogs: In June 2026, marking 20 years of work on the species, Taronga released 1,450 eggs into Kosciuszko National Park.
- Christmas Island blue-tailed skinks: These skinks died out in the wild. In 2010 Parks Australia rescued 66 of them, and some went to Taronga. In September 2026, 123 skinks from Taronga travelled by air, road and sea to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands for a release of 545 skinks onto Horsburgh Island.
- Regent honeyeaters: Taronga has worked on their recovery for more than 20 years. It has released more than 200 birds and helped plant over 30,000 trees in the Capertee Valley.
- Sanctuary One: Taronga's third site is a 3,050-hectare property on the North West Slopes of NSW, where it is restoring box-gum woodland.
Taronga Sydney now covers about 28 hectares and holds more than 5,000 animals of around 350 species. A new Taronga Wildlife Hospital, built on the old reptile house site, is due in 2027 to care for the zoo's own animals and for wildlife from across NSW.
Timeline
- 1879 – NSW Zoological Society formed.
- 1883 – Moore Park land (Billy Goat Swamp) granted. Jumbo arrives in July, and Jessie on 30 November aboard the Newcomen.
- 1884 – Zoological Gardens at Moore Park open to the public.
- 1902 – Bubonic plague in the animals closes the zoo for four months.
- 1903 – Albert Sherbourne Le Souef appointed secretary.
- 1905–06 – Site grows to 15 acres, and the lease is extended for 14 years.
- 1908 – Le Souef and Dr Robert Todd tour the world's zoos, including Hagenbeck's at Hamburg.
- 1911 – Charles Hedley argues for a zoo in Ashton Park, Mosman.
- 1912 – Bradleys Head site chosen and more than 40 acres set aside.
- 1915 – Rustic Bridge opens.
- 1916 – Moore Park closes in July and the animals move over the year. Jessie crosses the harbour on 24 September, and Premier Holman opens Taronga on 7 October.
- 1921 and 1928 – Sydney Girls High and Sydney Boys High built on the old zoo site.
- 1929 – Aquarium opens.
- 1939 – Jessie dies on 26 September.
- 1941 – Sir Edward Hallstrom appointed trustee.
- 1959 – King Kong, Australia's first gorilla, arrives.
- 1967 – Review turns the zoo towards conservation and education.
- 1968–72 – Platypus House, Rainforest Aviary and Nocturnal House built.
- 1976 – Elephant rides end, and the Education Centre and Friendship Farm open.
- 1977 – Western Plains Zoo, Dubbo, opens on 28 February.
- 1987 – Aerial Cabin Ride (Sky Safari) opens.
- 1988 – Bicentennial giant pandas visit.
- 2000 – $250 million master plan begins.
- 2006 – Asian elephants arrive from Thailand.
- 2008 – Great Southern Oceans opens, and the zoos become Taronga Conservation Society Australia.
- 2009 – Luk Chai, the first elephant born in Australia, arrives on 4 July.
- 2016 – Centenary, with a city parade and the Legacy Species commitment.
- 2018 – Institute of Science and Learning opens on 16 October.
- 2022 – Lion scare on 2 November.
- 2023 – Sky Safari retires on 31 January, and Nura Diya Australia opens.
- 2025 – Last elephants leave for Monarto in April, and Hari the rhino arrives in December.
- 2026 – New Sky Safari construction starts in April, alongside record frog and skink releases.
Visiting today
Do it the old way and catch the ferry from Circular Quay. It takes about 12 minutes to Taronga Zoo wharf, the same trip Jessie made in 1916, though she was on her feet the whole way. While the Sky Safari is being rebuilt you'll be walking up from the lower entrance, so wear good shoes because it's a steep hill. Buses also run to the top entrance: route 100 from the QVB, and route 238 from Balmoral, which links both entrances. Opening hours change with the seasons (9.30 am to 4.30 pm in winter and 9.30 am to 5 pm from September to April at last check), so look at taronga.org.au before you go.
If you want to see where it all began, walk up to the high schools on Moore Park. The remains of the old bear pit can still be seen within the grounds of Sydney Girls High. It's not open to the public, so check before you go. And if you're heading west, Taronga Western Plains Zoo at Dubbo is a cracking day out, with lots of room for the big animals.
Related posts on this blog
- Centennial Park And Queens Park – Sydney
- Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
- Boronia House – Military Road – Mosman – NSW
- NSW Blue Plaques – Lower North Shore
- History Of Dubbo – New South Wales
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney
Sources
- Museums of History NSW (Anna), "The story of how to move a zoo": mhnsw.au/stories/general/story-how-move-zoo/. Cites: "Shifting an elephant", Evening News, 25 September 1916, p. 4; "Sydney's new zoo", The Leader (Melbourne), 7 October 1916, p. 51; "For the people", SMH, 21 July 1911, p. 6; "The old zoo and the new", SMH, 14 October 1916, p. 7; "100,000 children", SMH, 12 September 1916, p. 8; Taronga Zoological Park Trust Annual Report 1916; J. H. Prince, The First One Hundred Years of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW 1879–1979 (1979).
- Museums of History NSW, "Jessie the elephant": mhnsw.au/stories/general/jessie-elephant/
- Museums of History NSW, "Taronga Zoo" archives guide: mhnsw.au/guides/taronga-zoo/
- Museums of History NSW, "How to Move a Zoo" exhibition, Museum of Sydney, 2021–22: mhnsw.au/whats-on/exhibitions/how-move-zoo/
- "Arrival of the elephant for the zoological gardens" (1883), Trove: nla.gov.au/nla.news-article239270227
- Word Histories, "'more hide than Jessie': meaning and origin", quoting the Daily Telegraph, 1 December 1883, and the SMH, 27 September 1939: wordhistories.net/2021/02/10/more-hide-than-jessie/
- Centennial Parklands, "Moore Park Zoo's colourful history" (2018): centennialparklands.com.au
- City of Sydney Archives, "Zoological Gardens, Moore Park": archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1941760
- Taronga Conservation Society Australia, "Taronga History – Our Story": taronga.org.au/about/our-history
- Taronga media release, "Construction set to take off for Taronga's beloved Sky Safari", 23 April 2026: taronga.org.au
- Taronga media release, "Record Release of 842 Critically Endangered Corroboree Frogs in NSW", 18 May 2026: taronga.org.au
- Taronga media release, "Marking Taronga's 20 Years on the Frontline for one of Australia's Rarest Frogs", 19 June 2026: taronga.org.au
- Taronga media release, "Back from the brink of extinction – the great Christmas Island blue-tailed skink comeback", 21 September 2026: taronga.org.au
- Taronga, "Acting locally for global impact" (Sanctuary One), 22 May 2026: taronga.org.au
- Wikipedia, "Taronga Zoo Sydney": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taronga_Zoo_Sydney
- Wikipedia, "Taronga Western Plains Zoo": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taronga_Western_Plains_Zoo
- Daily Liberal (Dubbo), "Taronga Western Plains Zoo turns 40", 2017: dailyliberal.com.au
- NSW Department of Education, "Western Plains Zoo Dubbo – Locational factors": sites.google.com/education.nsw.gov.au
- NSW State Archives Collection: glass-plate negatives of Moore Park Zoo and early Taronga (see the MHNSW guide above).
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, from the State Library of NSW, the Royal Australian Historical Society, the Powerhouse Museum (Tyrrell Collection), NSW State Archives, Mosman Library and individual photographers, as credited under each picture.