John Stafford, and I'm currently the owner of the Taralga Wildlife Park.
But I also am Mayor for the Upper Lachlan Shire.
We looked at buying a zoo at one stage and after that, we then decided where we couldn't
get that sale through it fell through at the last minute, and then we gave it a crack ourselves.
When we actually bought this property, I actually bought a collection of llamas at that time from a
chap that was one of the first people actually to bring llamas into the country.
And we bought some llamas, a couple of guanacos as it was at the time.
And then we also had some miniature ponies. And initially, it was a hobby that we hope to
sort of justify itself that it would pay its own way.
These days as more and more patrons come through, as the size of the place grows, it's very much a
business in its own right.
Yes, I've always had birds right from my early days.
I lived with my grandparents for a long period of time and my initial bird collection was housed in
red phone boxes because my grandfather worked for the TMG.
And so he would bring home old, redundant phone boxes and we turned them into bird
cages, scattered around the yard. I wish I had those phone boxes now,
they'd be worth a fortune. We've got over 100 species of birds here and
probably 500 in total. And the birds range from macaws
from South America, black cockatoos are among the larger things from Australia.
And a few of the different species of black cockatoos.
There's very, there's many of them yellow tails, red tails.
And then we also have lots of things like honey eaters, a big range of Australian parrots and
the more colorful things. My wife constantly reminds me that my passion
for unusual green and grey birds isn't necessarily what the average punter wants to see.
They're after the colorful parrot or something, but it's all part of the mix.
And then beyond that, we have a good range of Australian macropods,
something I'm particularly interested in. We've got wallaroos, small palmer wallabies,
tammar wallabies, little redneck pademelons and white kangaroos.
We have a couple of white kangaroos that are very, very popular.
We have wombats. We've got wombats that you can get
up close and friendly with, which is probably one of the biggest attractions currently that poeople
come here specifically for. And beyond
that there's a camel, and a lot of exotic animals like deer.
That's two dingoes howling away. We've got two dingoes here that we acquired
long before we actually opened the zoo.
We've we've been going for about two years now.
But the dingoes they were here for about... They're about five years old, two girls now.
A white one and a red one, affectionately called whitey and red.
And yeah, they're probably my favorite animals here, actually.
Well not probably, they definitely are. Just because they're unusual.
For me, I can get up close and personal with them, play with them like you would a dog.
But they're not. They don't have typical dog
characteristics in a lot of ways. And as I said, I can get up and play
with them but after about three minutes, they've had enough of me,
they wander off, they're a little bit aloof.
And they've got very individual characteristics of a wild animal.
As I said, for me personally, they're quite friendly.
Yeah, I really had little to do, in fact, nothing to do with local
politics before I came to Taralga. The previous years there'd always been a
local person on Council, representing Taralga's interests as such.
And in the last election, there was nobody sticking their hand up for it.
It was suggested to me I should run for council by a couple of people.
And I thought, 'that's not really me. That's not what I'm about'.
But as time went on, it became quite apparent there wouldn't be any one standing locally.
And so I said, 'Look, I'll do but only if there isn't another option'.
On the day, the final day when you had to basically put in your application of nomination,
they had to be in by four o'clock and I was in the office at ten to four because I waited till the
death to see somebody else would apply. And end result is, I got on council.
Taralga, in its own right, is booming at the moment, not only because we've put
a lot of effort in from counsels perspective, but a lot of outside interests has come in
and done up our wonderful local buildings. And so the end result's been great.
I'm pleased to be on council as such. The average day starts about six.
And in the summer time, with daylight saving, finishes about nine.
Last night we finished at 10. And so we put in very, very big days.
We work seven days a week. And I have no one else
to blame for that but myself. That's what I've stuck my hand up for.
Some days in the middle of winter in Taralga it can get a little bit rough feeding in the snow,
which happens occasionally here. You sort of wonder why you're doing this.
Like every job and everything that you're do in life, sometimes you've had reservations, but
overall we thoroughly enjoy
it.