At 87, Curley retired from his Bristol metal fabrication business long ago, but after forty years of making things with his hands, he wanted to continue being creative when he moved to Totnes after heart surgery.
He loves big cats while he has never been on safari himself, his first job was to make himself a leopard, that lies in the tree above his garden.
His creations are largely made from recycled materials.
After spotting a sheet of plastic in a neighbour’s skip, he offered to swap it for a sculpture and the Bridgetown safari was born.
“I made them a pony. Since then they’ve had a zebra. Another neighbour wanted a giraffe as a memorial, because she lost her husband. I think the idea went up the road from there,” Curley said.
Totnes quickly became a “zoo”.
The popularity of the animals soon spread to the surrounding towns and villages as requests for increasingly exotic creatures came in from home owners in Salcombe, Dartmouth, Stoke Gabriel, and Torquay.