Meet Solomon: Curragh Wildlife Sanctuary Welcomes Its Oldest, Most Unimpressed Resident

He arrived at 6:47 on a Tuesday morning, in a climate-controlled transport crate that had been in the air for just under sixteen hours. The Curragh Wildlife Sanctuary team — seven keepers, two vets, and the sanctuary's director, Dr. Fiona Okafor — were waiting on the tarmac at Wellcamp Airport outside Toowoomba. They had prepared for every contingency: stress vocalisation, refusal to exit the crate, territorial aggression, transfer shock. What they got was a chimpanzee who walked out, looked at the assembled humans for approximately four seconds, and sat down in the shade of the transport vehicle as though he had been coming here his whole life and found the fuss unnecessary.

"He just looked at us," says head keeper Tom Mackie, who has worked with great apes for nineteen years and has the restraint to find this funny. "Not aggressively. Not anxiously. Just — looked at us. Like we were mildly interesting. Then he sat down."

The chimpanzee's name is Solomon. He is thirty-four years old, which places him firmly in the senior bracket for a captive common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), and he carries his age with what Mackie describes as "a kind of dignity that makes you want to stand up a bit straighter." He is large, dark-faced, and powerfully built across the shoulders, with amber eyes that his keepers have already noted tend to fix on a person for slightly longer than is entirely comfortable. He has a small tuft of lighter hair on his chin that makes him look, in certain lights, as though he has made a considered choice about facial hair.

Solomon was transferred to Curragh following the closure of the Nguni Primate Sanctuary in Johannesburg, where he had lived for the past eleven years. Before that, he spent twelve years at a research facility in the Netherlands — a period the sanctuary describes only as "completed before current ethical frameworks" and declines to discuss in detail. Before that, very little is known. His paperwork lists his country of origin as the Democratic Republic of Congo and his estimated birth year as 1992. Nguni staff describe him as having arrived at their facility already fully adult, already calm, and already opinionated.

"He's always known his own mind," says Dr. Amara Dlamini, the veterinarian who oversaw Solomon's care at Nguni for the past six years and who travelled with him to Australia as part of the transfer protocol. "He's not difficult. He's not aggressive. He just has very clear preferences and he will let you know what they are. Quietly. Persistently. Until you stop being obtuse about it."

The preferences, it emerged within the first hour at Curragh, include: browse material arranged on the upper level of his holding enclosure rather than the lower; water served in a metal vessel rather than plastic; and, apparently, printed matter. The Farmer's Almanac — a 2024 edition belonging to one of the sanctuary's volunteers — had been left on a bench near the enclosure wall during the arrival preparation. By the time Mackie returned from the airport vehicle, Solomon had retrieved it through the mesh and was holding it against the wire with both hands, apparently examining the cover.

"We've had chimps interact with enrichment objects their whole lives," says Dr. Okafor, who founded Curragh in 2009 and has personally overseen the arrival of forty-one primates over that time. "Tyres, mirrors, boxes, rope. Never had one go straight for a book."

She pauses. "He held it for about twenty minutes. He seemed to be going through it page by page. I'm not going to say he was reading it. I'm also not going to say he wasn't."

The almanac has since been placed back inside the enclosure as a permanent enrichment item. Solomon has been observed returning to it on three separate occasions since arrival.

Curragh Wildlife Sanctuary, situated on 210 acres of Darling Downs scrubland forty minutes west of Toowoomba, is currently home to sixty-three primates across seven species, including three other chimpanzees — Marnie (female, 22), Dex (male, 18), and Clue (female, 27) — who form the sanctuary's established chimpanzee social group. Solomon will not be introduced to the group immediately; the sanctuary follows a phased integration protocol that typically spans four to six months for adult males, with mesh introductions beginning after an initial quarantine and health assessment period of thirty days.

"We don't rush it," says Mackie. "Particularly with an older male. They've got history. They've got habits. You introduce them correctly or you don't introduce them at all."

His first assessment of how the integration might go is cautiously positive. "The others know he's here," he says. "You can tell. Marnie's been sitting near the mesh side of her enclosure since Tuesday. She's watching. I think she's curious." He considers this. "Solomon, on the other hand, has not shown any particular interest in them yet. He's been reading the almanac."

Solomon's arrival marks a significant development for Curragh, which has been working for three years to establish a sustainable chimpanzee social group suitable for accreditation under the Zoo and Aquarium Association Australasia (ZAA) breeding and conservation programme. An older, non-breeding male like Solomon — too old to be part of a breeding pair, but experienced enough to serve as a social anchor for younger individuals — is considered a particularly valuable placement.

"Young male chimps need older males to socialise them properly," explains Dr. Okafor. "Dex is eighteen. He's smart, he's capable, but he's never had a senior male to model himself on. Solomon doesn't have to do anything dramatic. He just has to be present. He just has to be himself." She smiles. "From what I've seen so far, I don't think being himself is going to be a problem for him."

Solomon is currently on public display in his holding enclosure — viewable from the sanctuary's primate walkway — while quarantine assessments are completed. He can be seen daily between 9am and 4pm. He is, keepers report, already aware of the viewing public, and tends to acknowledge them with a measured glance before returning to whatever he was doing.

The almanac is in there with him. Staff have ordered a second copy, in case.