Anna Walraven

You'd also picked up some qualifications with zookeeping before this interview.

But what questions or what hurdles did the staff think were ahead of you?

Well, you did eventually get a job.

You get your foot in the door at Taronga Zoo, first of all, working as a zookeeper with the vet.

What did a typical day involve when you were in that first role at Taronga?

One of the animals that you had there in the hospital was Roy the orangutan.

How did you get him to take his medication?

How does one do that with an orangutan?

I mean, of course, a lot of these animals, wild animals, are potentially very dangerous for you.

I mean, what

What's it like to travel in the back of a van with a tiger that you know is sedated, but are you really confident that sedation is going to last as long as it needs to?

Did that ever happen to you or do vets always get those doses right?

You had quite a lot to do with the chimpanzees, which are such crowd favourites at Taronga Zoo and I think really at any zoo.

When it was your turn, Anna, to let out the chimps from their night house, how did you know it was safe to go in in the morning?

What ingenious trick had a zookeeper worked out?

When you would greet those chimps with your cheery good morning, boys and girls, how did they respond?

How many female zookeepers were there at Taronga when you joined?

And what did your male colleagues think of you joining this team?

How did they make that clear?

What kind of things did you experience in those first years?