Pack your trunks: Perth Zoo’s beloved elephant Permai en route to new home in South Australia

Permai — Perth Zoo’s beloved female elephant — has hit the road on her cross-country journey to a new home at South Australia’s Monarto Safari Park.

The 35-year-old was loaded into her air-conditioned crate and took off shortly after 11am on Monday alongside a team of zookeepers and veterinarians.

Perth Zoo staff were emotional as the truck carrying Permai left South Perth.

The decision was made almost seven years ago to move the zoo’s two elephants.

The other Perth Zoo pachyderm — bull elephant Putra Mas — will move later this year.

“The trip has been meticulously planned. We’ve mapped out the route that we’re taking, but it should take just over two days,” Perth Zoo life sciences director John Lemon said.

“It’s a bittersweet moment to know that she’s finally going to her forever home, but she’ll no longer be at Perth Zoo, so her welfare is the priority to get her with other elephants is a priority, and that’s our main goal.”

In SA, Permai will be joined by Burma, an elephant from Auckland Zoo who recently moved to Monarto, as well as two more females from Taronga Zoo in Sydney.

Both born in 1989 in the wild, Permai and Putra Mas arrived at Perth Zoo with a third elephant, Teduh, in 1992.

They joined Tricia, who was 35 at the time and went on to become the oldest elephant to be cared for by a zoo in Australasia, and one of the oldest in the world.

Teduh died in 2007, aged just 17, after battling muscular skeletal weakness.

In 2018, the zoo announced that they would be relocating Permai and Putra Mas to a bigger zoo when Tricia eventually died.

Four years later, Tricia passed away aged 65.

Perth Zoo will use the vacated space to create a bigger habitat for the African savannah exhibit, giving zebras and giraffes more room to move around.