Central Coast wildlife calling out for ice supplies
With extreme temperatures forecast for Friday, one of the Central Coast's major tourist attractions is desperately in need of bags of ice and bottles of frozen water to help keep the animals alive.
"We're looking for even more than we can handle.
"We don't have the freezer space so we're saying everyone can bring them up to the park, drop them at the visitors centre, we will wheelbarrow them out from there to get them out to the animals," Andrea Young, administrator from the Australia Walkabout Wildlife Park said.
Rangers will be working from 5am to keep the animals healthy, packing their dens with fresh ice every two hours.
"We don't have air conditioning out there for the animals in the enclosures so the next best things is getting the enclosures down so we spray and sprinkle the enclosures with water, and provide ice packs, so they can all lie up against them," she said.
With temperatures expected to exceed 40 degrees, the Australian Walkabout Wildlife Park is calling on the public to drop off frozen water bottles or ice.
"We have a full chest freezer of ice bottles that we use on a day to day basis when the temperatures do get hot.
"When we're expecting an extreme day like tomorrow the water bottles melt a lot quicker," Andrea Young said.
The Park boasts an array of Australian animals from dingoes to Tassie devils, wombats, flying foxes, kangaroos and emus.