Kyabram Accommodation, Hotels, Tours & Information

Kyabram

Kyabram is a large town of 5,500 people in an irrigated fruit bowl lying between the Goulburn, Campaspe and Murray rivers.

A 200km drive north from Melbourne, it takes its name from the Aboriginal word for thick forest, but the native bush is largely confined these days to the magnificent Kyabram Fauna Park. Set on 55ha at the southern end of town, the park is the fruit of a community-driven project launched as a non-profit venture in 1976.

Today it embraces five ponds whose waterfowl can be viewed from an observation tower, a walk-through aviary, a heated reptile house containing snakes and fresh-water crocodiles and an open range which is home to 400 different animal species including the parma wallaby, the alpine dingo, Tasmanian devils, wombats, echidna, emus, koalas, wombats, kangaroos and Cape Barren geese. The park is also guardian to a cottage built in 1867 for French adventurer Theodore Hazleman, who sailed the high seas as a cabin boy and survived the American Civil War before coming to Australia where he eventually set up as a local wheat farmer and fathered 13 children.

Find out more about the Goulburn-Murray Waters region of Victoria.