About Wilbur’s Wildlife 

Wilbur’s Wildlife is Adelaide’s up-close native animal experience. Our main offering is our mobile wildlife encounters bringing a range of friendly Australian native wildlife to your location for an up-close animal presentation. Each holiday’s we also host a discovery centre in a shopping centre somewhere in Adelaide where you can come visit us.

We provide our mobile wildlife experiences to a range of schools, kindergartens, preschools, aged care homes, birthday parties, vacation care, shopping centres, events, country shows and library school holiday programs each year. We travel across South Australia having been as far afield as Port Augusta in the North and Victor Harbour in the South.

To provide the animals for our program we maintain a private zoo home to over 150 animals representing over 45 species. We house all the main animal groups including a range of parrots, owls, frogmouths, lizards (monitors, skinks and dragons), snakes, turtles, saltwater crocodiles, hopping mice, sugar gliders, bettongs, dunnarts and invertebrates such as giant snails, spiders and mantis.

Recently we have been focusing on adding threatened South Australian species to our collection such as the bush stone curlew and heath goanna. We are also one of only a handful of holders of the playful Mitchell’s hopping mouse in South Australia.

In 2019 we visited 180 sites providing over 340 hours of presentations and displays. Our most popular displays are for vacation care and kindergartens.

About Cale Russell, Owner of Wilbur’s Wildlife

The owner of Wilbur’s Wildlife is 20-year-old Cale Russell. 

Cale has been involved in native animal keeping in South Australia since 2011 when he got his first stick insect having been inspired by seeing them on TV.

A year later he started volunteering at Humbug Scrub Wildlife Sanctuary taking on the responsibility of caring for the animals housed there, most days on his own. It was here that his love for koalas began helping to care for Annabelle and more importantly her son Wilbur. Caring for Wilbur included daily cuddles something his mother struggled to give him due to injuries sustained from being hit by a car.

In 2013 Wilbur returned to the wild and Cale moved on to the Gorge Wildlife Park where he was able to continue working with a larger range of koalas. Here he has also been privileged to work with the entire animal kingdom including reptiles such as exotic snakes, alligators, tortoises, turtles and lizards, monkeys, cats and a whole range of Australian natives. 

Following his start at the Gorge he began to acquire more insects along with his first reptile, a blue tongue lizard named Freddy who remains a favourite for the presentations.

In late 2015 he finished high school and established Wilbur’s Wildlife allowing him to spend his day’s educating South Australian’s on our native wildlife and spending quality time with his animals. This includes lots of hard work cleaning, feeding and creating new enclosures for them but there is also plenty of time for cuddles.

He also appears on TV occasionally speaking about his animals on shows such as Totally Wild.

Why are we called Wilbur’s? 

Often our name causes a bit confusion with the actual name of our owner. While Cale has adopted the name as a second moniker the name comes from a special koala which was the first animal he worked with. 

Cale first met Wilbur the koala in 2012 on his first day volunteering at Humbug Scrub Wildlife Sanctuary. At this point he was a 1-year-old terror known for his favourite trick of climbing on to the roof and jumping on to the heads of unsuspecting visitors.

Wilbur was brought to Humbug Scrub Sanctuary while he was still in the pouch. Unfortunately, his mother, Annabelle was hit by a car and has extensive arm damage which has never healed meaning she can’t climb tall trees. While Humbug Scrub would remain her permanent home, Wilbur needed to return to the wild.

Wilbur spent the next year at Humbug Scrub Wildlife Sanctuary being cared for Cale and the other volunteers. Cale would spend up to 3 hours a day with Wilbur cleaning his enclosure, feeding him and giving him plenty of cuddles. During this time he also grew out of his habit of dropping from the roof and would sit in the same spot while his enclosure was cleaned and wait to be picked up.

Eventually though, like all animal’s which were originally wild, it was time for him to return to the wild. On that night he was let go up and tree and Cale said a final goodbye to his friend. Since then he has not been spotted.

While Wilbur’s Wildlife are not currently home to a koala of our own they are top of our list to add to our collection in the future.