Your Next Safari Could Be in Our Own Backyard
Zebras, rhinos and endangered oryx all have their close-ups alongside emus and kangaroos on this surprising safari within an hour of Adelaide.
Through soft drizzle tracking down the window of my safari truck on this late afternoon, with savannah stretching to the horizon, I’m watching hippopotamuses do zoomies in a waterhole. It’s a lumbering, clumsy, slapstick frolic as joyous as it is surprising. One hour out of Adelaide, you expect to see wattle-and-daub cottages, grapevines, rolling green hills and maybe the odd kangaroo. You don’t expect hippos behaving like exuberant, waterlogged, one-ton puppies. But here they are. And here I am, savouring the final moments of a sunset safari through the “Wild Africa” plains that roll out from the recently opened Monarto Safari Resort. This is, in every sense of the word, wild.
The 78-room resort and the long-established Monarto Safari Park adjacent to it occupy some 1550 hectares of South Australia’s vast Murraylands region. Between them, the properties house more than 50 species of exotic and native mammals, reptiles and birds to offer the largest safari experience outside of Africa (within its fences the park could fit all of Australia’s major zoos combined and then some). The resort is run by experiential travel group Journey Beyond. It opened in May with a dreamy day spa, restaurant, two bars, two swimming pools and, exclusively for guests, thrilling small-group safaris through the 550-hectare Wild Africa precinct at dawn and sunset. Twenty luxury safari tents and an additional restaurant and bar are due to open by summer 2026.
The dawn safari I’ve joined pulls away from the resort in the winter darkness, with host Danielle at the wheel of a purpose-built 26-seat vehicle and a group of hardy, rugged-up explorers inside. We’d arrived at the resort at the same time as a rare but brief weather event that sent winds howling around the hotel and across the plains overnight. Now, as we set off through the scrub, rain is tapping the windows and low clouds smudge the line between night and day. No-one cares. Nature is, after all, what we’re here for.
The emerging light reveals two scimitar-horned oryx, a type of antelope, nibbling at grasses by the side of the road. Then, as our eyes follow a line of mallee scrub, there are two more. Up until the end of 2023, these oryx were classified as extinct in the wild. But breeding programs like the one at Monarto have seen them released back into the deserts of Chad and their status has since been changed to endangered. “That is exactly why we’re here,” says Danielle, “to connect people with nature and to save species from extinction.” (Like Adelaide Zoo, Monarto Safari Park is a not-for-profit operation and part of Zoos SA.)
“Zebras at 2.30!” a sharp-eyed passenger cries out. Binoculars are raised and camera lenses trained on the brightly marked but bizarrely camouflaged dazzle (learning the collective nouns for exotic animals is a happy bonus of the private safari) huddled in long, waving wheat grass. As we get closer, an emu struts into frame as if to remind us where we are. It’s here that Danielle shares the first of many fun facts and my hands-down favourite: every zebra has a different pattern. When a foal is born, it immediately memorises its mother’s butt, like a barcode, “and once the baby imprints that barcode onto its brain then it knows who to follow”.
We cross into an area called Amboseli but not before passing five giraffes feeding on seed, a zebra at their hooves like a dog at the dinner table hoping for fallout. The sun has broken through the clouds, casting an other-worldly glow over Amboseli’s lower grasses and a cheetah languidly cruising the fence line.
Southern White rhinos, an ostrich, herds of blackbuck and Barbary sheep and a sunning kangaroo fill our photo libraries en route to Wild Africa’s “sundowner” shelter where, while dunking rusk – an African safari staple – into steaming cups of Serengé-T (a blend of rooibos, Daintree black tea and butterfly pea flower), we relive the morning’s adventure. Sabrina and Kurt, resort guests from Devonport, Tasmania, had been to the neighbouring park previously but wanted to experience the private safari. “We’re so glad we did it,” says Sabrina. “Especially being able to stop and look at the animals; they’re really close to you.”
And not just on the safari. Waking next morning to glorious sunshine, I draw back the curtains and behold a real-life Pixar movie. Beyond the waterhole, giraffes are stripping mallee trees with their tongues, the sunlight bouncing off their patterned hides. Closer to the resort, an emu stalks by and a lone nyala stands with its back to a dazzle of zebras who suddenly break apart, like they’ve been caught gossiping. I know I shouldn’t anthropomorphise. I also know I should remember to breathe. Yet here I am.
