Australian Reptile Park, Gosford: Best tours and experiences

The behind the scenes tour at the Australian Reptile Park in Gosford shows the funnel web spider and snake-milking operations. Learning how antivenoms are produced makes this one of the best things to do on the New South Wales Central Coast.

When most people think about wildlife experiences in Australia, they’ll be looking to hand-feed kangaroos, cuddle koalas and swim with whale sharks. They might also want to try land-based whale watching at Head of Bight or Warrnambool, swim with Australian sea lions at Baird Bay or spot small marsupials in the Nightcap National Park.

However, not all Australian animals are quite so cute. The Australian Reptile Park on the outskirts of Gosford on the NSW Central Coast knows this, and specialises in the critters most visitors are scared of.

Australian Reptile Park behind the scenes tours

The Australian Reptile Park offers many of the usual Australian wildlife encounters. These include hand-feeding kangaroos, having your photo taken with a koala and trying to spot wombats in their burrows. There are also plenty of snakes, lizards and perenties to see.

But take the behind the scenes tour, and it gets much more interesting.

These behind the scenes tours of the wildlife park are led by experienced zookeepers, lasting 90 minutes. They include the chance to meet koalas and kangaroos up close, see the Tasmanian devil breeding facilities and feed reptiles in the otherwise closed to the public reptile room.

Australian Reptile Park, Gosford: Milking a funnel web spider

But the most interesting bit is milking some of the most deadly creatures on earth. The zookeepers approach funnel web spiders kept in a Perspex square that’s too smooth for the spiders to climb up. They prod the tips of the funnel web’s legs, then extract the venom using a suction system.

A Sydney funnel web spider can kill an adult human within 76 minutes, and a child within just 13 minutes. They are not to be messed with.

The Australian Reptile Park’s milking programme, however, is part of a bid to save lives from spider and snake bites.

That programme involves a roomful of highly dangerous spiders in plastic tubs being milked once a week. The venom is collected, then sent to a biopharmaceutical firm called CSL in Victoria. There it is used to make antivenom via the medium of rabbits.

Antivenoms, it turns out, are not made using chemistry sets. They come about via a six month process of injecting the poor bunnies with increasingly high doses of the milked venom. They gradually build up a resistance to it, and then their blood is centrifuged. The red blood cells go back into the rabbit, and the resistance-carrying white blood cells are take away. They become the key ingredient in the antivenom that’s injected into humans.

Sydney funnel web spider at Australian Reptile Park — A Sydney funnel web spider, waiting to be milked at the Australian Reptile Park in Gosford on the NSW Central Coast. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions

Australian Reptile Park tours: How to make snake antivenom

A similar process is used with snakes, although the taipans, tiger snakes, death adders, eastern browns and black snakes have their fangs pressed into plastic film covering a shot glass. And horses are used instead of rabbits.

The Australian Reptile Park has a substantial snake milking operation behind the scenes, too. But snakes are easier to get hold of than spiders.

The problem is getting enough male spiders to milk. “We rely on people handing them in, but a lot of people are so terrified of them that they don’t get this far,” says the zookeeper.

Australian Reptile Park spiders

The males are smaller than the females, but six times more venomous – and that makes them better for milking. “But part of the problem is that they – and we – don’t know they’re males until they’re two-and-a-half years old. They only live for a year or two after that – and their life is spent hunting a female to mate with.”

So while the females are happily burrowed in the ground, the males are crawling around trying to find them. The boys, when they’ve found a likely sweetheart, will twang away at her web until she thinks she’s caught some prey in it. He’ll then hold back her fangs, and do what grown-ups do when they love each other very much.

Once they finish, he’s stupid enough to walk away. She then attacks him, kills him and feeds him to her children. Not exactly romantic, is it?

But it’s detail like this that makes the behind the scenes tour at the Australian Reptile Park in Gosford so fascinating. The tours cost $175 for adults, and must be booked in advance. If you’d prefer less intimidating wildlife encounters in the region, try visiting one of the Central Coast’s national parks. Top spots include the Bulgandry Art Site in the Brisbane Water National Park and the Bouddi Coastal Walk to Macmasters Beach. The Central Coast can be turned into a detour on the drive from Sydney to Newcastle, Sydney to Forster or Sydney to Port Macquarie. Beach town Terrigal is the best place to stay.