Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park: What to Know Before You Visit

TL;DR: Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park moved from Parndana to Seal Bay in December 2024. The new address is 3115 South Coast Road. Tickets are $37 adult, $32 concession, $22 child and $105 family, and the park is open daily 9:30am to 5pm.

If your guidebook, blog post or saved map pin has Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park at Parndana, it’s out of date.

The park moved to Seal Bay in December 2024. That’s a shift from the middle of the island to the south coast, and it changes how you plan a day around it. A lot of content online still hasn’t caught up, which is why people occasionally arrive at Parndana wondering where the koalas went.

The new address is 3115 South Coast Road, Seal Bay.

Where it is now

The park now sits on the south coast, in the same location as Raptor Domain, the island’s birds of prey centre.

That’s a deliberate pairing. The two attractions share a site, you can buy a combined ticket, and doing both takes a morning rather than a day of driving between them. Raptor Domain runs in-flight displays with wedge-tailed eagles, owls and falcons, which is a genuinely different experience from the hands-on animal encounters next door.

The location also puts you a very short distance from Seal Bay Conservation Park, home to a resident colony of Australian sea lions.

What’s there

The park is built around close animal encounters rather than viewing enclosures.

• Hand-feeding kangaroos and wallabies in walk-through areas
• Koala holding, one of a limited number of places in Australia where this is permitted
• Penguins, with swimming and feeding sessions
• Wombats, dingoes and echidnas
• Daily keeper talks and feeding displays throughout the day
• Reptiles and birds across the wider collection

You explore at your own pace, with talks and feeds running to a schedule posted on the day. Check the board when you arrive and plan your loop around the sessions you want to see.

Tickets and hours

Combined tickets with Raptor Domain next door are available at a saving on buying both separately. If you’re doing both, buy the combined ticket rather than two singles.

Koala holding and some animal encounters carry an additional charge on top of admission.

Combining with Raptor Domain and Seal Bay

The relocation created a genuinely good half-day loop on the south coast.

Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park and Raptor Domain share the site, so that’s two attractions with no driving between them. Seal Bay Conservation Park is close by, and it’s the only place in Australia where you can walk on the beach among a wild Australian sea lion colony with a guide. Sea lions there haul out to rest between three-day fishing trips, and the guided beach tour is the reason most people come to this part of the island.

Do all three and you’ve filled a day on the south coast without covering much ground. Before the move, that same combination meant a cross-island drive.

One important distinction: at the wildlife park you can touch and feed animals. At Seal Bay you cannot. The sea lions are wild, the distances are set by rangers, and the rules are strictly enforced.

Planning it into a Kangaroo Island trip

Kangaroo Island is bigger than most people picture. Penneshaw to the western end is around two hours, and the south coast sits in between. Fitting the wildlife park, Seal Bay and the island’s western attractions into one day means a very early ferry and a lot of driving.

Our Kangaroo Island tours include the ferry crossing and handle the driving and the timing. Wildlife encounters feature across the itineraries, though the specific stops vary by product, so check the current tour page for what’s included on the day you’re looking at.

Worth noting from our own guidance: on tour you shouldn’t touch or feed wild animals and should keep a safe distance. That applies to wildlife you encounter in the open, not to the licensed encounters inside the wildlife park.

Frequently asked questions