Animals

Tuatara keeper retiring after caring for Henry for 52 years!

13:36 pm on 28 April 2023

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The main handler of Invercargill's celebrity tuatara Henry is retiring this month, after a relationship dating back more than five decades.

Lindsay Hazley met Henry back in 1970, then a schoolboy volunteering at Southland Museum, where the reptile lives.

The tuatara is the most famous of the 70 in the exhibit, and at more than 120 years old - give or take - has possibly decades more ahead of him yet.

Henry's handler Lindsay Hazley talks to Jesse about his long association with the tuatara.

Lindsay Hazley with Henry the tuatara outside the Southland Museum and Art Gallery building Photo: Kavinda Herath