By Morgan Reinwald in Sydney

It’s a place where the famous are known to encounter the endangered. 

Harry and Meghan, William and Kate, Lady Gaga, Sir David Attenborough and John Cleese have all stepped backstage at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo.

Going behind the scenes at this home to rare critters from every corner of the planet is otherwise off limits unless you’re on staff – or score an invite.

It’s a wondrous environment for the uninitiated but for those who call it their place of work, it quickly becomes normal.

Student zoology classrooms precede a private guest area and a kitchen, busy with workers preparing meals for the residents on stainless steel benchtops.

Further out back forklifts and other semi-heavy machinery is parked across the way from outbuildings signposted with laminated workplace memes.

Among them, Taronga’s staff are repeatedly reminded to keep the noise down inside via an image of a shushing gorilla.

The reason soon becomes apparent.

Surgeons and carpenters alike make up the zoo’s roughly thousand staff members, most of them outfitted in army-toned khaki and green.

In a nearby shed, tradesmen discuss maintenance repairs as two handlers stroll past with a pair of leashed dingoes.

“They’re not like normal dogs,” one exclaims without further detail.

In the same courtyard, a huddle of veterinarians wait.

When the van they’re expecting rolls in, a keeper steps out carrying a sedated 17-year-old patient named Noel, a Francois’ Langur.

“As a team, we would probably describe her as quite relaxed, quite chilled out,” zookeeper Patrick Lally explains.

“There will be days where she might give a bark to one of the … keepers who works with the rhino.”

Noel is one of five langurs at Taronga, among the rarest and least known-about of Old World monkeys.

Langurs are listed as endangered due to habitat loss and poaching for traditional medicines. About 2300 remain in remote parts of Asia.

They’re also highly unusual in that they live in matriarchal groups, keeper Lally says.

In the vet clinic and surrounded by tubes, monitors and spotlights, Noel’s four attendees reveal that her joints are arthritic and her elbow has fused.

Understandable due to her age.

Staff keep her warm with a blanket as they conduct dental work, take an ultrasound and draw blood.

Whenever Noel is cleared of an ailment, there’s a celebration in the room.

Photos from past surgeries involving other species line the walls, one prominently depicting a sleeping anaconda.

“That was a pretty normal procedure,” says veterinary officer Kimberly Vinette Herrin casually.

“We’re very relaxed here. We’re quite used to it and we want everyone to be engaged.

“Probably the most daunting for me would be an aesthesia of an elephant because it’s so big.

“Giraffes are a bit nerve-racking because they they can go down and twist themselves with such long necks.”

Her check completed, Noel is taken back to her enclosure where keeper Lally will watch over her.

He says extensive social research on langurs is lacking, however he has spent time with them up close and has noticed that they are fond of embracing one another.

“Just as we would, when you haven’t seen a friend for a long time”, he says.

When Noel reunites with her group, her daughter Emby does just this.

“Working as a zookeeper and having those relationships and understanding of those animals, it becomes normal in the sense of you do it day in and day out, but it’s actually really rewarding,” says the keeper.

Perhaps not celebrity-status rewarding but pretty close.