About an hour's drive north of Sydney in the town of Somersby is the Australian Reptile Park, a habitat for reptiles of all kinds, including snakes, lizards and crocodiles, as well as other typically Australian animals such as kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, casuars and others. One of the park's important activities is the collection of snake and spider venoms, which are then used in the production of antidotes, which has already saved over 15,000 human lives.
The reptile park was founded in 1948 at the aquarium in the town of Umina Beach, and in 1959, it was moved to North Gosford, where it was housed in the grounds of a former orange orchard. Nearly forty years later - in 1996 - the park moved once again, this time to Somersby. In 2000, there was a terrible fire, which almost completely burned down the park's main building, along with hundreds of residents. However, just seven weeks later, the park reopened, thanks to the help of citizens and zoos from all over Australia.
Among the park's main inhabitants are American alligators, crocodiles, turtles, Komodo varans, geckos, iguanas and many snakes. Spiders are represented species such as funnel-web spider, stone spider, tarantula (the largest in the world) and others. There's also a huge skeleton of a diplodocus dinosaur, nicknamed Ploddy by the local media.
For a long time, the "star" inhabitant of the park was crocodile Eric, who was born in 1947 in the northern Australia. In the 1980s, he was blamed for the disappearance of two children, captured and placed at Crocodile Farm in Darwin. However, there he bit the heads off two females he was supposed to live with and had a "duel" with another crocodile in which he lost a hind leg. In 1989 a special flight took Eric to Australia's Reptile Park, where he became a star, with a fan base of over 10,000 people around the world! Eric died in 2007 from a systemic infection. At the time of his death he weighed 700 kg and was 5.6 metres long - the largest crocodile in in the state of New South Wales. Today there is a memorial in the park in Eric's memory, and a new crocodile called Elvis has taken up residence in his cage.
