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If you visit the zoo, you might pick up a zoo map on your way through the gates. You’ll find a lot of information in it. Where the different animals are, where the zoo shop is, where you can get something to eat, when the seal show is on or where you can go to see night animals in the daytime.

But there’s one place at the zoo that’s not on the map, and that not many people visit – unless they have a sick or injured native animal with them. It’s the Wildlife Clinic.

I didn’t have a sick or injured native animal. I was there because I’d phoned and asked if I could talk to the wildlife rehabilitation officer at the clinic, to gather information for a book I was writing. The zoo kindly agreed.

So, on a sensationally sunny day in July, I caught a bus up the steep hill to the zoo’s main entrance.

The Wildlife Clinic is tucked away in a quiet corner. It’s the place where native animals in trouble end up – stranded seals, orphaned baby bats, pelicans tangled in fishing line and possums that have found themselves up against a car or a cat. The clinic cares for about one thousand sick, injured or orphaned animals every year.