Program Reviews

An amazing experience. Most of the day is taken up by doing lower calibre jobs such as cleaning tanks, washing out filters, and feeding the turtles. It would be nice to have more jobs which you could see the impact after the day. Such as cleaning out the rubbish that is around the site, or building the facility to be more effective.

I really enjoyed meeting the volunteers who come every day, and the people who help out for the program. If i am ever in cairns again i will definitely go see the turtles again, and see how i can help out however i can.

Great experience i would highly reccomend it. :)

As other projects, this new one is very good and ripe. This is a very valuable place for you no matter you want to be closed to cute wallabies,you want to experience an all english enviroment or you want to be diligent. You will learn many things from Lexi and Brian, who run this shelter for many years. They are really good and humorous that they will bring you to the city if you want.
It is not very tired to be here and you could be relax. But if you want to do more, there's jobs waiting for you! Imagine how excited they live with animals in one house! The best time of a day is feeding the wallabies and kangaroos in the pen and cuddling the joey!
Possums are also very cute.
Just come!

A very good project. The owner Jenny and her assistants are very friendly and careful. Even past an afternoon to visit around with one of her assistant and another volunteers. Big day, but fantastic day to help to prepare the food, feeding and cleaning. I felt very useful there and I learned a lot about megabat and microbat. Interesting places to visit around for the wildlife and nature lovers with Darrin and its tours and transfers company.

This project is almost perfect, and people here are extremely nice to talk with. It's located in a small town near the beach called Barwon Heads. Definitely beautiful. Accommodation is also satisfying. They drove us to shopping. Cool.

The staff teach you how to work, in turn, in the hope of enriching your experiences. You can see lots of unique animals, like the dingo and kuala. All is well. Just come and enjoy.

great experience! although I was only for a week, I felt i was able to actually help, the staff is very friendly and willing to help anyone. It was great to be able to be so close to this amazing animals, feed them and give them a scratch.
the place was very beautiful, so after working it was great to be able to try different things on the island, amazing place to explore!

overall an unforgettable experience! highly recommended =)

Wonderful exeperience! The staff are very friendly and the work is rewarding. I was worried that I wouldn't make an impact if I only came for two weeks, but you learn everything within 15 minutes on the first day! Right away you are able to participate in all tasks like feeding, cleaning, and cuddling (scratching) the turtles. It's a really great program that allows you to really help animals, all while in a beautiful location. I was blown away by how good I felt every day after volunteering and spending time on the island. My boyfriend volunteered with me, and although he doesn't work in the animal field, he was invaluable for heavy turtle lifting and hard scrubbing. It was really fun for both of us. I would recommend this trip to anyone, it was the perfect experience!

I can't even start to tell you how amazing the Flying Foxes and Aussie Wildlfie programme is. What an experience. I just completed 6 days at the centre and it was magical. Feeding baby flying foxes every 4hours, feeding and cleaning out the adult bats, and even seeing some of the more usual rescues such as possums, wallabies and koalas.
Despite deciding to cut my visit short, I will never forget my experience here and I hope to return next year to help out again, if they'll have me back :)

If you are truly in love with wildlife and particularly interested in flying mammals this is the best place on earth! The owner of the charity knows everything there is to know about bats of all types and species, to an extent you will not find in textbooks! Very hands on and very friendly people, I had an amazing time and will return when circumstances permit. Not to miss!

I am a international student from China and came to the surf coast koala and wildlife sanctuary this summer vacation.

People here are really nice and helpful. The homestay drove me to and from the working site everyday and I really appreciate that. I mean I am a college student and don't have a international driver's license, so I really can't imagine what if she didn't drove me.

There weren't many volunteers from abroad, but many locals. This sanctuary was mostly operated by plenty local helpful volunteers with several stuff members and they are all careful and devoted. They told me bunch of interesting stories about the animals there, koalas, kangaroos, wombats, dingos etc. To learn well about these animals first ,and then I could care for them better. The jobs for international volunteers could be chose by ourselves.

My job was to feed the baby joys with bottles and to clean up the koala area. Sometimes, I was asked to help other local volunteers to feed the wallaby or wombats. Those creatures were really, really cute and I just couldn't help but loving them. I fed them everyday, and whenever i brought their bottles or food plates, they would happily jump towards me. Animals are treated very well there.

Some tourist may come to the sanctuary, and it was pretty nice to talk with them with your perspective, a volunteer's perspective.

If I had a chance, I will definitely come to here again. Maybe the joys I fed can still recognise me~

Simply the greatest thing I have ever done!! The fellow volunteers were all really friendly and I met new people at the rehab centre every day. I loved feeding all the turtles, cleaning the tanks and giving the turtles a scratch! After all the turtles were fed and tanks cleaned, I enjoyed snorkelling around the island where I saw beautiful marine life which included the green sea turtles! One of the many highlights of volunteering at the rehab centre was participating in the release of 2 sea turtles at the beach, an amazing experience which really showed what volunteering really does. So if you are thinking of volunteering, please do! And if you do, please say hi to all the turtles for me, have fun!!