Maru Koala and Animal Park Tour Guide

The drive and Grantville's history

My friend had one request for her Australia trip. She wanted a weekend that felt lived in, not photographed. So I skipped the Great Ocean Road pitch and drove her down the M1 toward Koo Wee Rup instead, filling the tank there because the servo near Grantville itself keeps unpredictable hours. From Koo Wee Rup the Bass Highway rolls flat and green past dairy paddocks, and Grantville appears the way it always does to me, suddenly, a bakery, a pizza shop, and the Maru sign with a skull and crossbones flag snapping above the car park.

My friend gasped at the flag before we had even parked, and I had forgotten how strange it must look to someone who has never heard of the Grantville Pirate Festival. Before we joined the festival queue I made her stand at the edge of the car park and look toward the water, because Grantville deserves five quiet minutes before the noise starts. This stretch of Western Port belonged to the Yallock-balluk clan of the Bunurong people, one of six clans of the Boonwurrung nation who lived along this coast for thousands of years before any jetty was built.

My grandmother used to say the whole bay was a fish trap once, and Bunurong families managed these shallows through the seasons, moving between coast and range as the eel runs and mutton fish came and went. There is a Boon Wurrung story still told by Elders about the ilk, the eel, and how its return each summer signalled a season of plenty, passed down through generations rather than printed on any sign. Their creator being, Bundjil, is remembered as a wedge tailed eagle, and I have genuinely watched one circling over the Maru paddocks on a quiet afternoon.

European settlers arrived much later and gave Grantville a second, shorter story built entirely on timber. By 1874 two sawmills ran in the hills behind town, and a jetty on Deep Creek shipped that timber to Melbourne by boat along an eight mile tramway. Somewhere in that timber boom, in February 1877, a two year old named Nora Monks died in Grantville from the summer heat and was buried in the local cemetery, a detail I only found in an old Western Port Historical Society newsletter and never once in a tourist pamphlet.

The railway eventually killed the timber trade, the mills closed, and Grantville shrank to a general store until a family called the Heffers opened a small ceramics shop on the highway, the shop that slowly grew into Maru.

Tickets and booking

Maru sells two layers of ticket and it took me a couple of visits as a kid before I understood the difference. General admission gets you the whole park for the day, which includes the open range kangaroo paddock, every keeper talk on the daily timetable, Pirate Pete's Mini Golf, and on festival Saturdays the entire Pirate Festival program of games and stage entertainment as well. Adult, child, senior and family passes are all listed on Maru's own pricing page, and I am not going to quote you a dollar figure here since Maru reviews its rates each season and an old number printed on a blog is worse than no number at all.

Check the official Maru website before you travel for the current general admission price and for the festival day rate, since festival Saturdays sometimes carry a small premium over a regular visiting day. The second layer is animal encounters, which Maru sells separately from general admission and which you can book online in advance or at the gate depending on availability. A Koala Encounter, Dingo Encounter, Lizard Encounter and Snake Encounter are each priced and booked individually, and Maru also sells an Ultimate Encounter bundle that lets you pick three of these experiences in one booking and throws in a USB stick of your encounter photos at no extra charge.

My friend booked the koala and dingo pairing the week before we travelled, since the koala encounter slots fill fastest on weekends and festival Saturdays especially. Keeper for a Day is a separate, longer program again, booked well ahead through the park directly rather than through the general ticket page, and it runs for a set number of hours working alongside a real keeper rather than as a quick photo stop. If you want to support the park without adding another activity to your day, Maru also runs a eucalyptus tree sponsorship for a small fixed donation, which plants a gum tree of a species koalas actually eat and helps fund the koala food supply long after your visit ends.

Bring cash as well as card, since the two dollar bags of roo and wallaby feed near the open range paddock move quickly and a card tap for a two dollar bag holds up the queue behind you.

Food options

The Homestead Bistro sits at the centre of the property and is licensed, so it serves a beer or a glass of wine alongside the usual family menu of burgers, parmas, fish and chips and all day breakfast. It caters for common dietary needs including vegetarian and gluten free requests, though I would still ask at the counter if you have a serious allergy rather than assuming from the printed menu alone. On a normal day the bistro is relaxed and quick, but on Pirate Festival Saturday it fills hard around midday, so we ate late lunch instead and used the earlier hour for a picnic on the grass near the mini golf course.

Bringing your own picnic is allowed and genuinely the smarter move on festival day, since the lawns near the paddocks are shaded and far less crowded than the bistro queue at noon. There is also a small kiosk style counter for coffee, ice creams and quick snacks if you only need to refuel between animal encounters rather than sit down for a full meal. My friend ordered a parma at the bistro purely because I told her it was an Australian rite of passage, and she has not stopped mentioning it since she flew home.

14 things to do at Maru Koala and Animal Park

1Hand-feeding kangaroos

This is where every visit to Maru actually begins, because the open range kangaroo and wallaby paddock sits right past the entrance and the animals notice a feed bag from a distance. You buy a small paper bag of feed for a couple of dollars near the gate, and every cent of that purchase funds the park's wildlife shelter rather than the ticket business itself, which is worth knowing before you decide whether one bag is enough. Within seconds of walking into the paddock three or four kangaroos will lean against your knees like overgrown cats, and my friend stood frozen with delight rather than fear the first time it happened to her.

Keep an eye out for the albino kangaroos in this paddock, a small but genetically striking group the park has bred over the years, including a joey called Lunar who became something of a regular visitor favourite among locals who come back season after season. Feed slowly and flat palmed rather than tossing handfuls, since the roos here are used to gentle hand feeding and a thrown handful just scatters the group and starts a scuffle nobody wants near small children. There are hand washing sinks positioned just past the feeding zone specifically for this reason, a small practical detail regular visitors rely on that first timers almost always walk straight past without noticing.

Wear closed shoes here rather than sandals, since the paddock floor is a mix of grass, gravel and the occasional enthusiastic roo paw, and budget at least twenty unhurried minutes since most families end up staying far longer than they planned.

2Interactive keeper presentations

Maru runs a rotating weekly timetable of keeper talks rather than one single show, and understanding this timetable is the difference between a good visit and a great one. Across the week you might catch a Dingo Keeper Talk, a Koala Entry and Talk, a Reptile Talk, a Kangaroo Keeper Talk or a Tasmanian Devil Talk depending on which day you arrive, and the exact lineup is published on Maru's own website and updated regularly. These are not scripted stage performances, they are genuine working sessions where a keeper walks you through real husbandry tasks, feeding routines and conservation status while answering questions on the spot.

My favourite detail from the koala talk was learning that Maru rotates specific eucalyptus species to match each koala's individual preference, since koalas can refuse an entire fresh branch over a single leaf that has gone slightly stale. Arrive at the auditorium or enclosure five to ten minutes early, since popular talks like the koala session fill the viewing rail quickly on weekends and festival Saturdays. Bring your own water and a hat if the talk is outdoors, since several of these sessions run in open air enclosures rather than the shaded auditorium.

If you only have time for two talks in a day, I would pick the dingo talk and the koala talk, since both consistently deliver the kind of detail you will not find printed on the enclosure signage.

3Live sheep shearing show

This one surprises overseas visitors the most, since it has nothing to do with native wildlife at all and everything to do with old fashioned Australian farming life. Held in the all weather wildlife auditorium, a working shearer takes a sheep through a full shearing demonstration while explaining the tools, the technique and the history of shearing as a genuine rural trade rather than a novelty act. My friend, who had never seen a fleece come off in one piece, was genuinely transfixed watching how quickly and calmly the whole process happens once the shearer gets into rhythm.

Keepers usually let a few children come forward afterward to touch the raw wool straight off the sheep, still warm and full of natural lanolin, which is a texture most visitors have never felt before. This show tends to run on a set slot within the daily timetable rather than continuously, so check the noticeboard near the auditorium entrance as soon as you arrive so you can plan the rest of your day around it. It is indoors and undercover, which makes it the easiest fallback activity on a wet Gippsland afternoon when the open paddocks are less appealing.

Even visitors who came purely for koalas tend to rank this show as an unexpected highlight once they have actually sat through one.

4Native wildlife viewing

Beyond the ticketed encounters, a huge amount of Maru rewards slow, unhurried walking rather than a rush from one booked slot to the next. The wombat enclosure has a plexiglass viewing panel straight into the den, which is the only reliable way to actually see a wombat during the day since they are mostly nocturnal and sleep through most daylight hours. Inside the Settler's Hut enclosure you can walk in among squirrel gliders and a ringtail possum, both small, quick and easy to miss if you do not slow your pace and look up into the branches rather than at eye level.

The park also holds Tasmanian devils, added to the collection more recently than most of the older residents, so do not be surprised if an old blog post from a decade ago fails to mention them at all. Take time at the crocodile enclosure too, since it is easy to walk past quickly on the way to the koalas and miss one of the more unexpected residents of an otherwise very Australian native park. I would budget a full hour just for wandering the general enclosures without any booked encounter attached, since this is where most of the quieter, better photographs actually happen.

Bring a printed or downloaded park map from the entrance, since the walking paths loop in a way that is easy to double back on if you are not paying attention.

5Koala encounter

The Koala Encounter is Maru's headline booking and the one my friend cared about more than any other single activity on the trip. It runs as a small, fully guided group session where a keeper talks through koala conservation while you get the chance to pat and be photographed beside one of the resident koalas. The keeper supports the koala's weight properly throughout, and staff are strict about session length and handling, which is exactly what you want from a park that takes animal welfare seriously.

Book this one online ahead of your visit rather than hoping for a walk up slot, since weekend and festival Saturday sessions fill first, sometimes days in advance during school holiday periods. My friend's session lasted only a few minutes of actual contact time, but she still talks about the low grunting snore the koala made up close, a sound nothing on television prepares you for. If you only book one paid encounter at Maru, most repeat visitors including me would tell you to make it this one, since the koala genuinely is the animal most people fly in specifically to meet.

Pair it with the earlier Koala Keeper Talk if your schedule allows, since the talk gives you the conservation context that makes the encounter itself feel like more than just a photo opportunity.

6Dingo experience

The Dingo Experience puts you inside the enclosure with the pack for roughly fifteen minutes of pats, cuddles, play and very likely a few enthusiastic licks. One of the resident dingoes goes by the name Flynn, and he was the one who took an immediate and slightly overwhelming interest in my friend the moment we stepped through the gate. The keeper running our session explained a detail neither of us expected, that purebred Australian dingoes lack the base sweat glands sitting in a domestic dog's paw pads.

That means the classic corn chip smell every dog owner recognises after a walk simply does not exist on a dingo, and my friend made me sniff my own hand afterward purely to prove the keeper right. Dingoes are also, as the keeper put it, one of Australia's most misunderstood animals, since decades of livestock conflict stories have overshadowed how social and genuinely affectionate they are with familiar handlers. Book this encounter ahead of time the same way you would the koala session, since group sizes stay deliberately small to keep the pack calm.

Wear clothes you do not mind getting a little dusty, since fifteen minutes with an enthusiastic dingo pack is rarely a clean affair.

7Reptile handling

The Reptile Keeper Talk and the separate Lizard and Snake Encounters are where Maru leans into the are you brave enough energy that its own marketing openly admits to. During the talk, keepers bring out a rotating selection of the park's snakes and lizards while explaining venom myths, native species identification and the basic rules of not touching a snake you find in the bush at home. If you want hands on contact rather than just viewing, book the Lizard Encounter for a shingleback or blue tongue lizard, both calm, slow moving species that handle regular contact well.

The Snake Encounter is the more daring option, letting you hold and have a non venomous python curl around your arms under close keeper supervision throughout. My friend, who has a lifelong fear of snakes, sat out the actual holding but stayed for the full talk, and even she admitted the shingleback lizard's blue tongue flash was oddly charming rather than frightening. These sessions run at set times on the weekly timetable rather than continuously, so check the schedule at the entrance as soon as you arrive.

If reptiles are the main reason for your visit, plan your whole day around this slot first and build the rest of your itinerary around it.

8Quokka feeding

Quokkas are usually associated with Rottnest Island on the other side of the country, so finding a small colony at a Gippsland animal park genuinely surprised my friend once I explained the geography to her. Maru's Quokka experience lets you step into their habitat for an intimate, low key feeding session, a noticeably calmer pace than the open kangaroo paddock a short walk away. Quokkas are small, curious and famously photogenic thanks to what looks like a permanent smile, and keepers will remind you gently not to get too close with a phone camera since flash and sudden movement unsettle them more than roos.

This experience runs in smaller groups than the general paddock, which makes it a good option if your travelling companions want a quieter animal interaction away from a crowd. Because it is a smaller, more intimate setup, availability can be limited on busy weekends, so ask at the entrance desk when you arrive rather than assuming you can simply walk in whenever you like. Bring a little extra time here even though the enclosure itself is compact, since quokkas reward patience far more than the boisterous roo paddock does.

It is also one of the few Maru experiences overseas visitors specifically mention afterward as something they did not expect to find outside Western Australia.

9Cassowary viewing

Maru's resident southern cassowary is named Gloria, and keepers run a daily training and feeding session with her that draws a genuinely attentive crowd. Cassowaries carry a reputation as one of the most dangerous birds in the world thanks to a powerful clawed foot, and the keeper talk does not shy away from that reputation while explaining how training and enrichment keep Gloria calm and healthy in captivity. Watching her up close, the sheer size of a cassowary is hard to appreciate from photographs alone, since an adult stands roughly chest height on most adults and moves with surprising speed.

My friend was genuinely startled by how loud Gloria's low booming call is at close range, a sound produced through a specialised throat pouch rather than a typical bird call. This session sits on the animal experience timetable rather than running continuously, so check the schedule board near the entrance to catch the right slot. Cassowaries also play a critical ecological role in their native Queensland rainforest habitat as seed dispersers for fruit too large for most other animals to swallow, a detail the keeper shared that neither of us knew beforehand.

Keep a respectful distance from the enclosure fence throughout, since this is one bird every keeper treats with visible extra caution.

10Echidna meet-and-greet

Maru's resident echidna answers to the name Snorkles, and the keeper introduced her as one of the most active echidnas she had worked with, which surprised us both given how still most wildlife documentaries make echidnas look. Echidnas are monotremes, one of only two groups of mammals on the planet that lay eggs rather than give birth to live young, the other being the platypus. Rather than aggression, an echidna's main defence is simply curling into a tight, spine covered ball or digging straight down into loose soil until only its spines are visible, and the keeper demonstrated the difference between a relaxed echidna and a startled one during the session.

You will not get to hold Snorkles directly, since echidna spines make direct handling impractical, but the meet and greet lets you observe her up close in a controlled space while she forages for the keeper's food mix. My friend found this one of the calmer, more meditative stops of the day compared to the noisier kangaroo paddock, and said watching Snorkles dig was oddly satisfying to stand and watch. This session runs at set times, so pair it with a nearby talk to avoid dead time waiting around the enclosure.

If you are travelling with a nervous younger child who is not ready for snakes or dingoes, this is a gentle, low intensity activity to build their confidence with first.

11Pirate Pete's Mini Golf

Pirate Pete's course centres on a small mountain, a working waterfall, and a full sized pirate ship taken over by buccaneers, and both of us stopped to photograph nearly every hole. I walked my friend straight to the mock outback dunny near the gold mine hole, a weathered timber long drop toilet built purely as a set piece rather than a working bathroom. Peer through the gap in the door and an animatronic grouch is hiding inside, ready to startle whoever leans in for a closer look, and I still remembered exactly which hole it was on from a school holiday visit years earlier.

Golf is included in general admission rather than sold as a separate ticket, so there is no reason to skip it even if animals are your main reason for visiting. Play in the late afternoon if you can, once the festival crowd around the main paddocks has thinned out, since the golf queue is consistently shorter than the koala photo queue for most of the day. Bring your own light jacket if you are visiting outside summer, since the course sits in open ground exposed to whatever wind is coming off Western Port that day.

Budget forty five minutes to an hour for a relaxed eighteen holes, longer if you have young children who want to replay their favourite obstacles.

12Kids' dinosaur playroom

Attached to the Homestead Bistro is a small indoor dinosaur themed playroom, and it is the single most useful wet weather backup on the entire property. A southerly rolling in off Western Port happens here more often than any tourism brochure admits, given how exposed this stretch of coast is to Bass Strait weather systems. The room is scaled for younger children rather than teenagers, with soft play elements and dinosaur themed decor that keeps toddlers and early primary aged kids entertained while parents finish a coffee nearby.

Because it sits directly beside the bistro, it works well as a rotation point, one parent supervising play while the other queues for food, then swapping over. It is free to use for ticket holders rather than a separate paid attraction, which makes it an easy default stop if the weather turns or if a child simply needs twenty minutes of indoor energy release between animal encounters. Do not expect a large space, since it is a supplementary room rather than a standalone attraction, and manage younger children's expectations accordingly before you go in.

We used it briefly ourselves after lunch, mostly to shelter from a sudden squall, and were back outside within the half hour once the sky cleared.

13Keeper for a Day program

This is Maru's deepest, most immersive booking, and it is worth planning your entire trip around if genuine behind the scenes access matters more to you than a quick photo. Rather than a short encounter slot, Keeper for a Day has you working alongside one of Maru's experienced keepers for an extended session, taking part in real husbandry tasks rather than a scripted interaction. This program is booked directly through the park rather than through the standard online ticket checkout, and availability is limited since only a small number of guests can shadow a keeper on any given day.

Expect tasks like food preparation, enclosure maintenance support and closer supervised contact with a wider range of animals than the general public ever sees, always under full keeper guidance throughout. I have not done this one myself, since my visits have always been shorter day trips, but a friend of a friend who works in Gippsland tourism completed it and described it as the single best animal experience she has had anywhere in Victoria. If this is the activity you care about most, contact Maru directly well ahead of your travel dates rather than assuming you can add it on the same day.

Age restrictions and physical requirements may apply, so confirm these details directly with the park when you enquire rather than assuming every age group qualifies.

14Grantville Pirate Festival events

On the one Saturday a year the whole park turns into a pirate town, and this is the activity that brought my friend to Grantville in the first place. The festival spreads itself across the whole property rather than sitting in one stage area, with wooden leg throwing near the emu run, gold panning beside a trough of muddy water close to the wombat den, and a costume competition for best pirate and best wench on the main lawn around midday. Entry to the festival is covered by your general admission on the day, so you get the animal park, the mini golf and the pirate program for one combined ticket rather than paying twice.

The stage act rotates from year to year, sometimes a licensed cartoon crew, sometimes a local children's theatre group, so ring the park the week before if you are travelling specifically for a particular act rather than trusting an old listing online. Come dressed up if you want a shot at the costume prize, since judges that year were three local CFA volunteers still in their own pirate gear from an earlier volunteer shift that morning. My friend stood beside me at the wooden leg toss and said this was the most delightfully small town thing she had watched on her entire trip, and she meant it as the highest compliment.

Arrive at gate opening if you can, since both the car park and the koala encounter queue fill fastest in the first hour of a festival Saturday.

A festival morning, remembered in order

We joined the gate queue at nine and I already regretted not arriving earlier. Small pirates in eye patches lined up ahead of us, cutlasses taller than their own arms, parents balancing prams over the gravel. We packed a picnic rug and ate on the grass near the mini golf course rather than fighting the midday bistro crush, and it turned out to be the better call by a long way.

By early afternoon we had done the koala talk, the dingo encounter, a full round of mini golf and half the festival games, and neither of us had once looked at a phone screen out of boredom.

Night on the foreshore

We were not driving back to Melbourne that night, because I wanted my friend to feel Grantville after the festival crowd had gone home. We booked a powered site at the Grantville foreshore caravan park, the same one my family used every January when I was small. By early evening the town had gone completely quiet, just gulls over the mudflats and the low hum of the highway somewhere behind us.

We walked down to the water in the dark and found the old jetty standing black against a slightly lighter sky, and I told her the story local history buffs on regional Facebook groups still argue about, that part of the original 1870s jetty structure may still sit tangled somewhere beneath the newer boardwalk. Nobody could show us official signage confirming any of it, because there genuinely is none at the site itself. We woke early the next morning and walked back out at low tide with two takeaway coffees from the bakery on the highway, and a local fisherman told us gummy sharks and snapper come into these shallows at high tide, and that the tide chart matters here more than the clock ever does.

If our trip had landed on the fourth Sunday of the month, we would have walked straight into the Grantville Market instead, over a hundred stalls of produce and secondhand goods on the foreshore reserve, with a self serve lolly truck locals talk about more fondly than almost anything else in town.

Planning your trip

Maru sits at 1650 Bass Highway, Grantville, in the Bass Coast Shire, about ninety minutes from Melbourne along the M1 and Bass Highway. It works as a half day stop before Phillip Island, or as a full weekend base if you want the festival, the animal park and a proper night on the coast the way we did it. There is no direct train to Grantville, so budget for a car, a connecting bus service, or a day tour that bundles Maru with a wider Phillip Island itinerary.

We left on Sunday afternoon smelling like hay, campfire smoke and sunscreen, and my friend still messages me the odd voice note asking if Charlie the cockatoo is still on his perch by the entrance. He is, as far as I know, and so is the grouch in the outback dunny, and so is the jetty that some maps still refuse to acknowledge exists.