Burma's new playmate on way

Auckland Zoo's Andrew Coers gets to know Anjalee at the elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka.

Anjalee the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to Sri Lanka yesterday.

The 8-year-old Asian elephant is en route to Auckland where she will join the zoo's 32-year-old resident elephant Burma. Anjalee is the first of two elephants that will be coming to Auckland from Sri Lanka's Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage via a 12-hour flight on an Emirates freighter plane.

Once she lands in New Zealand she will be taken on the Defence Force C-130 Hercules to Niue, where she will be quarantined for a required 90-day period before settling into her new home.

Auckland Zoo director Jonathan Wilcken said Anjalee was a lovely elephant. He said it had been an enormously complex undertaking to get Anjalee to Auckland and zoo staff have been working with Pinnawala staff for the past six months to begin transitioning the large mammal.