I had the joy of attending Healesville Sanctuary with my family in late February to have a look around (and of course take some photos). The sanctuary is unlike Melbourne and Werribee Zoo in that it has far more Australian animals than the other Zoo's, it really is an Australian based Zoo covering all realms of Australian animals from birds through to the classic koala!

On my visit, we took our two children (1. year old, and 3.5 years old), to be honest for the youngest it was not too excited since I don't think he fully comprehended what was going on however,  for our eldest she loved the experience. one of the prime reasons for going was to see the “Spirits of the Sky” show which is run at around 12pm and 2:30pm which highlights some of the extraordinary animals that Australia has in its skies, everyone loved the experience.

Beyond the spirits of the skies, there were heaps of other animals to enjoy from the Koala, to the Emu, kangaroo and onwards. This trip I primarily used my Nikon D610 and the Tamron 150-600mm lens, since I wanted to get closer photos of the birds in flight. To get these photos I put the camera in shutter priority mode with a shutter speed of around 1/1000 – 1/2000 since the shutter speed needs to be fast to ‘freeze' the motion and keep an acceptable level of sharpness. Furthermore, Auto-ISO is fantastic for these types of shots since it lets you focus on what matters, the animals and the picture and not all the technical information.

Location:

The Sanctuary is located a short distance from Healesville and near badgers creek (on Badger Creek Rd) as per the map below;

Images (Click to enlarge):