Staff at Werribee Open Range Zoo in Melbourne's west are celebrating the mammoth effort it's taken to successfully move a herd of elephants across the city to their new home. Keepers say the elephants are warming to their new digs but aren't quite ready for visitors just yet.
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00:00Zooming around the new stomping ground, Werribee Open Range Zoo trumpeting the arrival of nine
00:09Asian elephants.
00:10It's been years in the making and yeah, there's a lot of tears, there's a lot of joy.
00:14Planned to precision, the gentle giants made the 40 kilometre trek from Melbourne Zoo inside
00:20shipping containers on a convoy of trucks.
00:23And taking the first steps into the unknown, were at first a little cautious but soon gave
00:28in to curiosity.
00:30They came together, they were immediately trumpeting, touching each other, flapping
00:34their ears, which really indicated to us that they were feeling really comfortable.
00:37And the new arrivals aren't the only ones celebrating the successful relocation mission.
00:42The $88 million new habitat is almost 10 times the size of the elephant's previous enclosure.
00:48It's about the same size as the entire Melbourne Zoo.
00:51The spacious abode includes two mega pools, elephant barns, sprawling grasslands and mud
00:57wallows, which zookeepers say has already kept the young calves very busy.
01:02They're playing day one, it's all we could hope for.
01:06And they've slept beautifully last night.
01:08They're thriving and that's what we've done this for.
01:11Zookeepers say it will still be a few weeks before visitors can see the elephants on parade
01:16but after a big move, there's time to freshen up with a well-deserved bath.
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