Tiger King: Meet Australia’s big cat keepers risking their lives to look after endangered animals

Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem And Madness has gone viral in Australia.

And although the documentary series focuses on big cat sanctuaries in America, there are several zoo keepers risking their lives to look after similar deadly mammals much closer to home.   

Australia’s answer to Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin, minus his 22-year jail sentence for a murder-for-hire plot and other crimes, can be found at Mansfield Zoo in Victoria. 

Owner Dave Murphy is arguably Victoria’s leading big cat enthusiast. 

Mr Murphy runs the private zoo, 180 kilometres north-east of Melbourne, with wife Bronwen Wilson, and they both love and care for several African lions. 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to close their doors, tourists could pay to watch the couple feed the animals and even camp overnight near their cages.  

In photos from Mansfield’s Zoo Facebook page, Mr Murphy is seen bizarrely dressed up as Santa Claus as he feeds the deadly lions over the Christmas period.  

In another, a huge lion jumps up on a cage as Mr Murphy feeds the wild animal a piece of meat. 

Meanwhile, over at Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, several Bengal and Sumatran tigers are on show.  

Before the outbreak of coronovirus forced the park to close, families would pay up to $61 a ticket for entry into the zoo and a sneak peek tour of its animal hospital. 

While the park is incredibly popular with tourists, the the Irwin-family, who run establishment, have previously hit the headlines for all of the wrong reasons following several tiger attacks on zoo keepers.

In 2013, a 114kg Bengal tiger, named Charlie, became ‘overexcited’ and bit his handler Dave Styles on the neck and shoulder during a tiger show.

The following year a 10-year-old Sumatran tiger, named Juma, bit another zoo keeper on the leg as the animal was moving from one enclosure to another. 

‘1 of our tigers tagged a keeper on leg today. Keeper has tooth puncture wound but is fine. Juma the tiger’s good too,’ Australia Zoo tweeted after the 2014 incident.

Similarly, another Australia Zoo keeper, Che Woolcott, suffered puncture wounds to his arms after being mauled by Sumatran tiger Raun in January 2016. 

Mr Woolcott was ‘scratched’ by the 12-year-old tiger during their routine morning walk in an off-display area at Australia Zoo in Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast.

The handler was rushed to Nambour Hospital with puncture wounds and deep scratches after the tiger ‘swatted his paw’ at him. 

Despite the incidents, Steve Irwin’s children Bindi, 21, and Robert, 16, have gone unharmed as they continue to care for the tigers at the zoo. 

They often share updates of Australia Zoo’s tigers to their social media platforms, raising awareness of the endangered animals and cuddling up to tiger cubs. 

‘Flashback to the days when our tiger cubs were just tiny and so incredibly squishy,’ gushed Bindi alongside a video playing with a cub in July 2016.  

Other places to see tigers and lions in Australia include Taronga Zoo Sydney, Canberra’s National Zoo and Darling Downs Zoo in Queensland. 

Netflix’s Tiger King was watched by 34.4 million people globally in the first 10 days following its release on March 2020.

It tells the story of Joe Exotic, who spirals out of control amid a cast of eccentric characters in the murder-for-hire story from the underworld of big cat breeding.

At the heart of the series lies Joe’s rivalry with animal rights activist Carole Baskin, who was accused by Joe of killing her missing multi-millionaire husband, Don Lewis.

Don went missing in 1997 and despite being declared dead, a body has never been found. Carole denied Joe’s unfounded accusations in the bizarre documentary.