The village of Healesville is in rural Victoria, in Australia close to a one hour drive from Melbourne's main business area. Healesville is located on the Watts River, that feeds directly into the Yarra River. Healesville is most likely most well-known for the zoo, Healesville Sanctuary. The town has a local populace of almost 8000 in 2021, but that is usually swollen if adding in the travellers. The town was first established in 1864 mostly as a lodging location for the nearby goldfields and for engineering of the Yarra Track and was named after Richard Heales who was the Premier of the state of Victoria from 1860 to 1861. Healesville lies on the ancestral land of the native Wurundjeri people. A reserve for the local Aboriginal people called Coranderrk was established in 1863 south from the primary township. In addition to travel related the main employment near Healesville is dependant on sectors including sawmilling, horticulture and viticulture. The town has become a traveler destination since the 1880s, with the Grand Hotel becoming constructed in 1888, and the Gracedale House becoming built in 1889. In addition to the Healesville Sanctuary, the travel and leisure is based around the wine and food industries from the Yarra Valley, with other destinations like the Badger Weir Picnic Area, the Yarra Valley Railway along with the Healesville Organic Market. There are also many bistros and dining establishments, and volunteer-run occasions like the Healesville Music Festival, Open Studios, along with the Yarra Valley Rodeo that bring in people to come for the day from Melbourne or a vacation. A tourist association was first formed within the 1920s to market the region. The township is the southerly ending of the Bicentennial Heritage Trail that has its northern end at Cooktown, Qld, north of Cairns. The track is 5330 kilometers so that it is the lengthiest route of its kind in the world.
The Healesville Sanctuary that has been in the past called the Sir Colin MacKenzie Sanctuary is a nature park or zoo with hundreds of indigenous Australian wildlife which are exhibited in a semi-open natural setting. Sir Mackenzie setup the Institute of Anatomical Research in 1920 on 80 acres of Coranderrk. In 1927 it was gifted to the Healesville Council getting to be the Sir Colin MacKenzie Sanctuary later in 1934. The Healesville Sanctuary is actually now one of the few zoos having an active platypus reproduction program, breeding their first in 1943. In 1978 the Sanctuary was placed under the operations of the Victorian Zoological Parks and Gardens Board. The Sanctuary is placed in a natural bushland ecosystem in which pathways wind through different habitat areas which features wallabies, , emus, dingoes, kangaroos as well as over two hundred indigenous bird species. People typically spend two to three hours to get around the zoo and experience a flight show using indigenous birds. In 2009, the sanctuary had been threatened by the serious Black Saturday bushfires which ravaged a lot of the area. Many their threatened wildlife were removed to Melbourne Zoo during the time. Healesville has an proactive Country Fire Authority volunteer fire brigade which was started in 1894 that competed a leading part to fight the fires in the area at that time.