The Australian Adventure, 1987

1987

The build: In 1987 the zoo opened the Australian Adventure, a five-acre exhibit built at a cost of $2.5 million — the zoo's second great expansion and, by the zoo's own account, one of the first exhibits in the nation to immerse visitors in a continent's culture as well as its animals, using Australian architecture, music and plant materials to complete the setting. The city's Franke Park history calls the opening "the crowning event of the year": the zoo broke all its attendance records and received a prestigious award from the professional zoo community.

The standing: The Adventure's reputation compounded. A 50,000-gallon shark aquarium was added to it in 2004. In 2008 the authors of America's Best Zoos named Fort Wayne the country's number one zoo for Australian animals and exhibits, calling the five-acre Australian Adventure "one of the country's largest and best displays of Australian animals." The exhibit also brought the zoo its longest-running animal distinction: the Tasmanian devils whose Fort Wayne course, 1987 to 2004 and again from 2016, is told in its own entry below arrived with the Australian era. The Adventure stood twenty-seven years before the zoo rebuilt it in place, 2014–16.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne Children's Zoo news release, "Stingray Bay opens today at the Zoo," 3 September 2015 (the Australian Adventure "originally built in 1987 at a cost of $2.5 million"), via AroundFortWayne.
2. City of Fort Wayne Parks & Recreation Department, "Franke Park History" (the 1987 opening as "the crowning event of the year"; attendance records; the professional award), cityoffortwayne.in.gov.
3. Fort Wayne Children's Zoo news release, via The Post & Mail, 2008 (America's Best Zoos — Nyhuis and Wassner — naming Fort Wayne the No. 1 zoo for Australian animals and exhibits; the 50,000-gallon shark aquarium added in 2004; the immersion design).