Townsville's World Famous Zoo

Post

Subscribe

When I first moved to Townsville in the early 1970s I lived at Saunders Beach about 30 kilometres north of town. I drove home each night on the Bruce Highway. At the Bohle, I saw old billboard signs on the highway advertising lions, giraffes, tigers, elephants and monkeys.



I wondered about the signs because I knew Townsville didn’t have a zoo then but after a while the signs disappeared and I forgot about them. A few years later I had the opportunity to visit the old zoo site. We had a special permit to visit as part of some research and were allowed through the locked gates. I wandered around the area, the previous home of many exotic and native animals. The pits and cages and enclosures were still there but in a very dry dilapidated state.



I later discovered the site had been an Internationally recognised private zoo, bird sanctuary and crocodile farm, Mr Edmund St John Robinson, a crocodile hunter started the zoo in the 1920s.

In the 1970s the Bohle was a dirty industrial area with a sewerage plant so I was surprised when I found out the area had once been a world-class zoo.

I learned the zoo featured deer, bears, monkeys, tigers, lions, Australian native animals and a selection of crocodiles including Tarzan who was six metres long.

Mr St John Robinson was the first person to breed crocodiles in captivity from a number of reptiles he captured while operating the Halifax Hotel near Ingham.

A journalist writing in the Sydney Catholic Press on Friday 11 July 1935 wrote, “During our representative's visit to Townsville he and his daughter were invited to inspect the Mt St John Zoo, which is privately owned by Mr St John Robinson. He was agreeably surprised to find there a splendid collection of Australian fauna. Most impressive was the fact, that all the animals and birds were quiet and friendly. One of the possessions is a lovely tree-climbing kangaroo, very rarely seen in captivity. Another rare animal is the Cuscus, or monkey-possum from the scrubs of the peninsula. Of particular interest to visitors are the crocodiles, (the saltwater man-eater and the Central Queensland crocodile) and the American alligator. There are a large number of other animals, such as monkeys, Indian buck, antelope, snakes, ostrich, emus, cassowary, native cats, bears and rock wallabies. The birds of the lake are very interesting. They include a large variety of wild ducks and geese, and a number of imported waterfowl, swans, jabiru, and cranes and they make a very educating and interesting sight. Mt St John is situated about four miles from the post office, and large crowds visit the zoo every week”.



Another visitor, Ethel Joseph described the zoo in the Townsville Daily Bulletin in 1938. “…In and around the wired area, there is a natural setting of lagoons. At the time of the writer's visit the water lilies were in full bloom, and hovering above them were dragonflies with great wings of brown gauze that shone like opals in the brilliant sunlight. Surely a place where one could stay and dream!

The talkative 'cockies' greeted one and all with a friendly 'Hello.' The golden eagle, a very graceful bird in its flight from end to end of the enclosure, is peculiarly beautiful and imposing, but its gait when on the ground is awkward, due no doubt, to its long talons. Of great interest are the chattering gibbering monkeys. One actually howled; her cry was exceedingly loud and mournful, and all because she was not lucky enough to get the offered peanut. A greedy baby monkey had nuts by the dozen stowed away in his Jaws. He resembled a sufferer from mumps. When his mother approached he huddled into a corner and the innocent, almost sheepish look he assumed did not deceive her into thinking that he had less than his share. To the amusement of the lookers-on, she soundly cuffed his ear. There at the miniature zoo, we saw beauty, man's invention and God's creation of many things”



By 1950, the zoo was under threat from the Main Roads Commission and the Irrigation Department. They argued that during the wet season, the highway overflowed with water because of the height of the zoo’s main dam, and ordered its demolition.

Mr Robinson attempted to fight the state authorities, and even reportedly offered to pay half the costs of building a culvert on the highway to divert water away from the road.

He threatened to close the zoo. A newspaper reported “On June 29, 1950 the Minister for Lands and Irrigation (Mr. Foley) commenting on Mr. St John Robinson's decision to abandon the Mt St John zoo at Townsville, stated that any direction by Government departments did not affect the carrying on of the zoo.

Mr. Foley said that the Irrigation and Water Supply Commission had refused to license a dam erected by Mr. Robinson on Rim's Creek. The dam caused the backing up of water during rainy periods across the Townsville Ingham road and prevented the public from using the road. At no time had the Commissioner of Irrigation and Water Supply directed the removal of the dam, said Mr. Foley but before issuing a license the Commissioner required that Mr Robinson take action to prevent water 'ponding' behind the dam to an extent which would cause damage, flooding, or interference to the main road, subsidiary roads, or to adjoining properties. Mr St. John Robinson's decision to abandon the zoo was very much regretted, but the matter was one entirely for his decision, and it could not reasonably be claimed as having been forced upon him by the action of anv Government department said Mr. Foley”.

Mr St John Robinson continued to fight the bureaucracy and tried to issue an Injunction. The Townsville Bulletin reported on Friday 2 March 1951;

“Mr St John Robinson, proprietor of the Mt St John Zoo is seeking a Supreme Court injunction to restrain the Commission of Irrigation and Water Supply in relation to work the Commission proposes to carry out on Townsville-Ingham road. Robinson in his writ asks the Court to restrain the Commission 'from entering upon the property of the plaintiff situated in the County of Elphinstone, Parish of Coonambelah along the Townsville-Ingham road and being part of the property known as Mount St John from doing threatened damage to the property of the plaintiff by damaging a dam erected thereon”.

Mr St John Robinson threatened to sell the zoo 'lock, stock, and alligator.' He said it should be Australia's most unusual auction sale. Seventy-one crocodiles, a 14ft alligator, 30 monkeys, and a pack of dingoes would come under the auctioneer's hammer.

'What I can't sell I will turn loose. I have no other choice,' said Mr. Robinson. He said he had to sell the zoo because the Irrigation Department intended to blow up the dam, which formed a 200-acre lake, the zoo's only fresh water supply.

Mr Robinson must have lost the injunction because in late May 1952 state engineers set explosives and blew up the dam wall, causing the destruction of thousands of ducks, geese, swans and other birds along with their nests and eggs.

That same year L A Watson wrote in his book The Townsville Story published in 1952 that people came from all over Australia to see the intrepid Mr St John Robinson feed the crocodiles and ‘drop the food into the gaping jaws of the saurians’. He said ‘Mt St John zoo was the only place in the world where man-eating alligators are fed by hand’. Watson wrote that ‘apart from its more novel side, the alligators, Mt St John zoo was performing a grand national service by helping to preserve Australia’s wildlife.’ ‘The birds in season provide a wonderful sight. Thousands upon thousands of wild duck swarm around the lagoons, and by that queer sense of wild creatures, are so sure of their safety that they come right near to the zoo buildings’.

When I lived in Townsville the highway at the Bohle was often flooded after heavy rain so obviously blowing up Mr Robinson’s dam didn’t solve the problem. A few times we couldn’t get home because the road was flooded. A new bypass was built after we left town in 2001.

There were further problems at the zoo. On Thursday 24 September 1953, a 60-year-old Aboriginal man who had been mauled by a crocodile the previous Tuesday died in Townsville hospital. Mr Hugh Henry was cutting grass at the edge of a lagoon when a 15-foot crocodile dragged him into the water. He fought the crocodile and was dragged to safety by zookeeper Mr Clifford Beresford Robinson, son of the zoo owner. Robinson assisted Mr Henry to the bank and drove him to the Townsville hospital. He had a fractured left thighbone, fractured left leg, fractured right arm and multiple lacerations. Doctors immediately gave transfusions and performed emergency surgery, but Mr Henry's condition deteriorated over the next few days and he died from his injuries.

Mr Clifford Robinson was later awarded the Clarke Silver Medal, Australia's highest Royal Humane Society award.

Mr Robinson sold the zoo in 1955 to Wirth and it became Wirth’s Mt St John Zoo and operated mainly as a winter retreat for southern circus animals.

The zoo had more bad luck in 1962. On 28 February that year, a male orangutan (Sima satyrus) who had been in captivity in the zoo for four years since being brought from Borneo became very ill. His temperature was 103.6oF (39.7oC), and he had a slight swelling of his upper lip and a puncture wound in his mucous membrane. He had lost his appetite and was lethargic. The Government Vet came to see him and prescribed potent antibiotics, but he died at 8pm on 21st March. The post-mortem showed he died of the rare tropical infectious disease ‘Melioidosis’ (caused by a gram negative bacterium) which is often fatal to man and animal. The organism name was changed in 1992 to Burkholderia pseudomallei. It is found in contaminated soil and water and can cause abscesses in the lungs. liver and brain.

Melioidosis has been in the news a lot lately. People in Townsville and Cairns have been dying from the disease since the floods in early 2025.

By 1970, the once-vibrant tourist attraction was closed and it was a long time until Townsville got another zoo.

Years later I did visit the Billabong Sanctuary in Townsville and it was a great zoo, but I admit after a visit to Africa in 1985, I do prefer to see wild animals in their natural habitat, although I know not everyone has that opportunity. I wrote about the African visit here.

I have also been very lucky to have seen a lot of Australian native animals in the wild, including Lumholtz tree kangaroos, wombats, echidnas, snakes, goannas, emus, crocodiles, rock wallabies, tiger quolls and a lot of other animals and birds.



%wntownsville
#history
#zoos
#animals_and_wildlife