Ever since she could remember, Katherine Sarris loved animals. She grew up with two cats in her South East Melbourne home and was to work in cattery and volunteer to work for the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals (RSPCA) when she was young.
She has been a Keeper at Healesville Sanctuary for the past nine years. The sanctuary which is in the Yarra Ranges, 50km north east of Melbourne specialises in the care of native Australian animals under the Zoos Victoria banner.
Her love of animals was originally fostered by her brother Jim who brought home a cat that she was to care for as a child.
It was not an easy thing to convince her parents, Ilias and Ioanna, that she wanted to spend her life looking after animals, said Ms Sarris.
“Zoo keeping was not a typical career (for a Greek Australian child). I remember having conversations with aunts over becoming a zoo keeper and the questions always leading to why did I not become something like a teacher instead,” Ms Sarris told Neos Kosmos.
“They could not understand why and worried that I ‘would be outdoors all day’.
“The job is not just about the animals but also about the environment they live in,” said Ms Sarris who has been a Keeper at Healesville the sanctuary for the past nine years.
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She completed a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Zoology at Monash University. She subsequently also completed courses in animal studies and zoo keeping giving her a background in vet nursing and animal studies.
Her main charges at Healesville are a mob of Kangaroo Island Kangaroos and Palmer Wallabies but she is also involved in the international breeding programme for Goodfellow’s Tree Kangaroos, a rare species from Papua New Guinea that is threatened with extinction. The animals are at the centre of an international programme that incorporates zoos in Australia, Europe, Japan and Singapore with the global species coordinator at Melbourne Zoo.
Keeping a constant eye on the breeding pair of Bagam and Mani is a demanding enough task and Ms Sarris is responsible not only for their daily care but also for keeping a careful record of their lives. The pair, who have been together for five years at Healesville, have produced two offspring and there is hope that a third may be on the way.
Mani came to the sanctuary from Canberra and Bagram came from a zoo in Germany.
“It is a big responsibility providing information on the species and coordinating information for the annual report. Individual animals (in the breeding programme) may be swapped for genetic purposes.”
Although the usual exchange of the animals has been curtailed by the global pandemic.
Ms Sarris will also double up for colleagues to look after their Koalas, Wallabies, Bilbies and the nocturnal Feathertail Gliders.
In her early years at the sanctuary, she looked after parrots and lyre birds. She also took a turn looking after Dingoes and Tasmanian Devils when a colleague went on maternity leave.
“The Tree Kangaroos are my favourites. The most challenging are the Kangaroo Island Kangaroos -a young kangaroo will pass 1.5kg of poop in a day.
The kangaroos will “poop” as they range through their paddock and it is one of the keeper’s roles to pick up after them.
“Our paddocks are full of grass but we supplement their diets with herbs and pellets that have vitamins and minerals. They also have bark from branches and shrubs (browse) in their diet, so we provide them with old eucalyptus branches that the koalas will not have processed.
“The Tree Kangaroos are leaf eaters but we give them a formulated diet that includes vegetables, fruits, greens. We also give them browse to help with their teeth,” she said.
The Keepers use treats as a way of training the animals to make some of the work a little easier.
One aspect of her work which has been cut by COVID is the interaction with the public.
“We look after the animals but we also look after public presentations. We answer questions from the public and help people to open up to the world that the animals live in.”
“Even if the public is not here, our work does not stop. We still have to feed them, clean up and ensure they are in good health. We also do maintenance work, weed, prune, repair. We are nutritionists, we track and record the animal’s behaviour. We wear all these different hats,” said Ms Sarris.
The keepers also work on changing the environment of the animals under their care to keep them stimulated and interested.
“In the wild, the environment is always changing, so we also try to add to the (sanctuary animals’) environment. We plan herbs like sage and oregano (to stimulate their sense of smell) or we hang logs with food wedged into them so that they have to pull the food out – this also stimulates them physically and gets them to use muscles they would not normally use.”
It is a measure of her enthusiasm for wildlife that she still gets a kick of seeing wild kangaroos living near urban areas.
“We still keep a wonder for animals. If one of the keepers spots a platypus at a creek near the sanctuary we all come to see it,” Ms Sarris said.