Hanna and the Penguins The job of assistant curator at an iconic local tourist attraction comes with surprising access to some secret little lives, writes Kate Taylor. Hanna Geeson has, quite literally, a pretty cool job. Words by Kate Taylor. Pictures by Angela Hayward.
As the penguin keeper at the Ballarat Wildlife Park, she spends her days looking after the colony of little penguins that has called Ballarat home for nearly two years now.
It was a move for the penguins, of course, but it was also a move for Hanna, who left her Melbourne home to live and work (and love it) in a regional setting.
The process used, however, to determine the relocation of these penguins is an intriguing
story. Their move to Ballarat, it turns out, was picked from a book by a higher guiding hand. Yes, there is an actual book – a penguin stud book that details where all the little penguin colonies are located throughout Australia. Because this species has declining numbers, these flightless birds are managed by an Australasian coordinator who decides which penguins can go where, in order to keep breeding and genetics at an optimum level. “It’s so that there’s no possible inter-breeding or anything like that,” Hanna explains. Ballarat has added to what is probably the world’s cutest book, too, with 10 chicks having been hatched at the park since the colony was first established in June 2017.
“A good breeding season is a promising sign for us; it means our penguins are happy,”
Hanna says. “It takes 35 days for the tiny, cute, fluffy chicks to hatch. When they emerge
from the egg, they are slightly smaller than a domestic hen’s chick and weigh about 40 to
50 grams. After eight to 10 weeks, they’re fully grown (about 1.2 kilograms) and are ready to hit the water.”
When Hanna begins her working day each morning, 20 little penguins waddle up to her looking for their breakfast.
“As soon as they see me, they know. They come shuffling in because they know that food is coming,” Hanna says, smiling. “Then I do a head count. They are completely safe here, but in the wild they are quarry for large birds of prey, as well as for cats, dogs and foxes,
and I do head counts throughout the day to make sure that each one of them is safe and accounted for.”
After a morning of cleaning up, Hanna leaves the penguins to splash about in their pool
and then tends to the management of the park’s other wildlife – for her, mostly the koalas, snakes and wombats.
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