Volunteers at Billabong Sanctuary
Felicity Love
A native of Dorset in the UK, Felicity has been travelling around Australia for the past 8 months, doing odd jobs and seeing the sights.
She hadn't planned to stay long in Townsville, but while laid up with a sprained ankle on Magnetic island, she heard about a volunteer opportunity here at Billabong Sanctuary, and has generously decided to spend 3 months of her time with us.
It's all a new experience for Felicity, who has a BA (Hons) degree in Sociology, German and Tourism. She'd been working for the NHS in England before budget cuts wiped out her job. Now she finds herself chopping up chunks of meat for the crocs, raking paths, cleaning cages, and helping with animals during the shows. She's loving it all, even when Cleo the wombat piddles on her! Her language skills are invaluable when overseas tourists visit the park. Thank you Felicity!
Casey Simmons
Casey is a year 12 student at William Ross High School, doing her school-based apprenticeship here at Billabong Sanctuary.
She comes in every Wednesday to help with food prep, cleaning cages and food runs.
With a goal of working with animals after school, Casey is looking forward to the re-opening of the park, when she will also help with the daily feeding and handling shows.
Meantime, she's learning as much as she can, and getting closely acquainted with all our native animals.
Sharon and Jade
Meet two very special young women from the Netherlands. Students of Animal Husbandry at Hogeschool HAS Den Bosch, they are here to work on a three month term project. Their assignment is to study the operation of a wildlife park, and suggest ideas for improvement.
While here, they are involved in all the day-to-day aspects of wildlife care, working along with our Rangers in food prep, cleaning cages, raking paths, and presenting feeding shows.
Sharon van't Hart, from MÓ±drecht, has also studied as a vet tech so is now our resident expert at feeding Divetelact to koalas. She worked at a safari park in the Netherlands, but had never seen most of our amazing native animals. After graduating she hopes to work in wildlife parks to improve enclosure design and enrichment.
Jade (pronounced 'Yada') Couwenberg is from Udenhouk, and has fallen in love with our koalas, especially Houdini. She's helping Ranger Robbie with early training of our barn owl chicks. After university, she wants to work with organizations that train helper dogs for disabled people, with the goal of setting up her own business.
For their Uni project, Sharon and Jade are writing a Food Prep for Dummies manual, to standardize and streamline the instructions for preparing the specialized diets required for our animals. They will also write an introductory Handbook for new volunteers, to help familiarize them with the operations of the park. Both publications will help ensure continuity and cut down on training times for new staff and volunteers at Billabong Sanctuary.
Thank you both for all your great ideas and hard work.
Fantastic tour guide and shows. Couldn’t ask for any better, thanks – Janai Trotter, Melbourne We love Ranger Dan – Col and Dan Haynes, NSW |
