Australia Zoo vs Lone Pine: which one should you actually visit?

The short answer

Visit Lone Pine if you have half a day, you're based in Brisbane without a car, you want native Australian animals at close range, or you're travelling with young children, older parents or anyone who tires easily. It's cheaper, closer, flatter and more relaxed.

Visit Australia Zoo if you have a full day, you want a proper big-zoo experience with African and Asian species alongside the Australian ones, you're travelling with kids aged roughly 6–14 who want spectacle, or the Irwin story matters to you. It costs more and eats the whole day, but it delivers a lot more.

And if you want to hold a koala, that decision is made for you — see the koala section below, because this is where the two parks have genuinely parted ways since 2024.

At a glance

Both are legitimate, well-run, ZAA-member wildlife facilities. The difference isn't quality, it's scale and intent. Australia Zoo is a conservation park built around shows and a global collection. Lone Pine is a specialist koala sanctuary that has been doing one thing for nearly a century.

Getting there from Brisbane

Lone Pine — genuinely close

Lone Pine sits at Fig Tree Pocket, roughly 12 kilometres south-west of the city centre, which is a 20 to 25 minute drive outside peak hour. Parking is free and there are accessible bays. If you're not driving, Brisbane City Council buses 430 and 445 run to the sanctuary, and the stop is a one-minute walk from the gate.

The nicest arrival, though, is by water. The Mirimar cruises up the Brisbane River from South Bank and lands you at the sanctuary's own jetty — about 75 minutes each way with commentary along the river. It turns the transport into part of the day rather than a chore, and it's the option we suggest most often to visitors who want one memorable Brisbane day without a hire car.

Australia Zoo — a highway run

Australia Zoo is at Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast, about an hour's drive north of Brisbane on the Bruce Highway. Coming from the south you exit at Steve Irwin Way (Tourist Route 24) near the Glass House Mountains and follow it for around 18 kilometres; the entrance is three kilometres past Beerwah on your right. The drive itself is scenic — the Glass House Mountains are visible for a good stretch of it.

Without a car, the train runs from Brisbane to Beerwah station and the zoo's courtesy coach meets most services. If it isn't waiting when you arrive, the zoo asks you to phone them during opening hours and they'll send one out. Check current timetables through TransLink before you commit to that plan, particularly on weekends.

Add it up honestly: two hours of return travel plus six hours at the zoo is an eight-hour day minimum. That's the real cost of Australia Zoo, and it's the single biggest reason people who only have one free day in Brisbane end up at Lone Pine instead.

2026 prices, compared

The headline gap is about $14 per adult. It widens once you add a family, and it widens a lot once you add experiences — which is where both parks make their real margin.

Two things worth noticing in that table. First, Lone Pine's family pass covers up to three children for $193, where the equivalent five-person family ticket at Australia Zoo is $274.40 — a $81 difference before you've bought a coffee. Second, Lone Pine's adult yearly pass costs $101, which is less than two adult day passes. If you're a Brisbane local who might go twice, the maths is obvious.

What's included without paying extra

The koala question

This is the fork in the road, and a lot of older travel advice is now wrong about it.

Lone Pine stopped offering koala holds on 1 July 2024. The sanctuary — the place where Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and a long line of visiting heads of state had their koala photo taken — retired the practice, citing shifting visitor feedback and a preference for letting koalas do what koalas do. In its place it runs closer, calmer encounters where you stand beside a koala on its perch, learn about it from a keeper, and photograph it without picking it up.

So if holding a koala is the non-negotiable item on your Australia list, Australia Zoo is your answer — and you'll want to book that encounter well ahead, because session numbers are strictly limited.

It's worth understanding why the numbers are limited, because it explains a lot about how these experiences run. Queensland's rules on koala handling are unusually specific: a koala can be used for photography for no more than 30 minutes in a day and 180 minutes across a week, can't work more than three days consecutively, and females with joeys aren't handled at all. That's the reason you can't simply turn up and queue.

Worth adding, since visitors often ask: koalas are naturally solitary and sleep for most of the day, and researchers who study marsupial stress have argued publicly that handling isn't good for them. Lone Pine's change wasn't made under a legal requirement — holding koalas remains legal in Queensland — but it reflects where a lot of the industry conversation has moved. Neither choice makes you a bad person. Just go in knowing what each one is.

What you'll actually see

Lone Pine

More than 100 koalas, across enclosures organised loosely by the animals' age and social grouping, so you get to see joeys, adults and older koalas rather than one representative tree. Beyond that, around 70 species of Australian wildlife: kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, dingoes, Tasmanian devils, echidnas, platypus, emus, reptiles and a large collection of native birds.

The five-hectare kangaroo reserve is the thing most people remember. You walk in among free-roaming kangaroos and wallabies, buy a bag of feed, and they come to you. No fences between you and them, no queue, no timed session. For a lot of international visitors this ends up being the photograph they take home rather than any koala shot.

Australia Zoo

Over 1,200 animals across a genuinely global collection. The Australian side is comprehensive — koalas, kangaroos, wombats, dingoes, cassowaries, echidnas, Tasmanian devils, and a serious crocodile collection including the Crocodile Environmental Park. But the zoo's scale shows in what else it holds: an African Savannah with giraffes, rhinos, zebras, cheetahs and meerkats; a South-East Asian precinct with tigers and red pandas; Sumatran elephants at Elephantasia; ring-tailed lemurs and Aldabra tortoises on Bindi's Island; quokkas; and a Komodo dragon, the only one in Queensland.

Australia Zoo's encounter list runs well beyond koalas, too — wombat at $69, echidna and tortoise at $59, dingo and cassowary at $109, otters at $124, rhino, meerkat, quokka, lemur and red panda at $134, and a Komodo dragon encounter at $144 on Tuesdays and Saturdays. A giraffe snapshot is $79 for up to five people, which is the best-value one on the list for a family.

Shows, talks and timing

Both parks are built around a daily schedule, and both reward you for planning around it rather than wandering.

Australia Zoo's centrepiece is the Crocoseum, a 5,000-seat stadium built for the Wildlife Warriors show — saltwater crocodiles, free-flight birds and snakes, in the round. It was Steve Irwin's idea and it remains the reason a lot of people make the trip. Conservation shows run throughout the day at other venues, so check the board at the entrance and build your route around the two or three you most want to catch.

Lone Pine's schedule is smaller but tighter: the Free Flight Raptor Show and the Sheep Dog Show each run twice daily, lorikeet feeding twice daily, and keeper talks on koalas, crocodiles and dingoes through the day. Because the site is compact you can realistically catch all of them in one visit, which is not true at Australia Zoo.

How long you need

Lone Pine tells visitors most people spend three to four hours there, and that matches what we hear back. That's enough for a couple of shows, a long stint in the kangaroo reserve, the koala enclosures and a coffee. It leaves you a genuine afternoon — Mount Coot-tha lookout and the Brisbane Botanic Gardens are close enough to bolt on, and plenty of people do exactly that.

Australia Zoo is not a half-day. Six hours on site is the standard figure day-tour operators build around, and with 110 acres of public grounds and a show schedule to work through, you'll use it. Between travel and the visit, plan on losing the day.

Who each one suits

Accessibility, briefly

Both parks are broadly accessible and both offer free entry for a carer or essential support person with a valid Companion Card. Lone Pine notes that because of natural terrain not every surface is wheelchair accessible, and publishes an interactive map worth checking before you go; wheelchairs and strollers can be hired at the entrance. Australia Zoo's free internal shuttle helps a lot with the distances. Lone Pine also gives a 10% discount to Australian first responders and to APOD members.

Doing both

If you have four or more days in South East Queensland, doing both isn't excessive — they genuinely don't duplicate each other. The order that works best is Lone Pine first, early in your trip, as a half-day introduction to Australian wildlife, then Australia Zoo later as a full-day excursion once you've got your bearings.

What we'd avoid is stacking them on consecutive days. Two wildlife parks back to back flattens both, particularly for children. Put a beach day, a hinterland day or a city day in between.

If you're building a longer Brisbane itinerary, our three-day Brisbane itinerary puts Lone Pine on day two, and the five-day version makes room for Australia Zoo as a guided day trip.

When to go

Both parks are open every day of the year with narrow exceptions. Australia Zoo closes on Christmas Day. Lone Pine opens late on ANZAC Day, 1:30pm to 5:00pm, and closes early on Christmas Day at 3:00pm. Lone Pine's last entry is 4:00pm, so a late-afternoon arrival is a bad idea.

For crowds, the pattern is the familiar Queensland one: school holidays and long weekends are busiest, and mid-week outside holidays is noticeably quieter at both. For weather, Brisbane's winter — roughly June to September — is the most comfortable time to spend a day walking outdoors, with mild dry days and far less humidity. Summer visits are best started at opening, before the heat builds. Animals are also more active in the cooler part of the morning, which is a better reason to arrive at 9:00am than beating the queue.

If you want the seasonal detail, our guide to the best time to visit Brisbane goes month by month.

Questions we get asked

Keep planning

Official sources: Lone Pine tickets and memberships and Australia Zoo ticket information.