Warrawong Earth Sanctuary

Unlike many other wildlife parks, the animals here are not kept in enclosed runs. Instead, park founder Dr. John Wamsley took a 14-hectare (35-acre) tract of farmland, replanted it with natural bush, fenced it off, and went around shooting the introduced rabbits, cats, dogs, and foxes that plague much of Australia.

The good doctor then took to reintroducing animals native to the site, such as kangaroos, various types of wallabies, bandicoots, beetongs, platypuses, possums, frogs, birds, and reptiles. They are all thriving, not only because he eliminated their unnatural predators, but also because he re-created waterways, rainforests, and blackwater ponds.

The animals roam free, and you're guided through on 1 1/2-hour dawn or sunset walks. There's a restaurant on the premises, and you can even stay overnight in large cabins with bathrooms, wall-to-wall carpeting, and air-conditioning with both dawn and dusk tours, a two-course dinner, and breakfast.

Warrakilla

The historic estate now known as Warrakilla began as the Wheatsheaf Inn in the 1840's. It was the Cobb & Co halfway house between the colonial capital of Adelaide and the rural township of Strathalbyn 40 kilometres to the southeast. Little of this original building exists today, but parts of the bullock track are still to be found in the scrub immediately to the north. In the late 1840's and 1850's prospecting for gold was a common activity in the district around the Inn. The Echunga goldfields, for example, produced 11 tonnes of gold in this period, and so the Wheatsheaf Inn would have been a focal point for much activity.