Monday 8th & Tuesday 9th October 2012 Broken Hill – Dubbo 753km + Dubbo Zoo

We woke at 6am, but we moved our watches forward to 6.30  NSW time, eventually left around 7.30am.  We had an appointment at Ryan’s Caravans in Dubbo at 3pm, not sure if we are going to make it leaving so late.   On the way out of town, we dropped postcards in the post box for the grandchildren.   Do you know that you can locate post boxes on a map in google!   We will be using that a few times this holiday.

We were going to get fuel in Wilcannia, but we drove passed and then decided we could make it to Cobar to fill up, after about 50 km or so we realised the car was chewing through the diesel far too quickly, that’s what happens when you are pushing it a bit to get to your next stop,  so we started to drive slower to conserve the fuel – it just wasn’t helping with getting to Dubbo by 3pm!!   Anyway as luck would have it there was a petrol station in the middle of nowhere and we filled up.    🙂  Much to our relief.

We got into Dubbo at 3.45pm and were told they couldn’t look at the van today, but they said they could do it first thing in the morning.   Country people are so obliging, shame we are not more like that in the city!!   We asked if it would be ok to park the van out the front of their business and they said they wouldn’t mind, so we set up for the night, then unhitched the van and headed into town for a look around.    We found a Hogs Breath café and went in for some drinks and a bite to eat.  Was all very nice.

It was an industrial area where we were parked, Greg managed to fill the 9kg gas bottle up for $20 over the road, there were dump trucks coming back for the night, hoons speeding up the no through road, planes flying low overhead, was good to wake up in the morning and everything was in one piece   🙂

Tuesday 9^th October 2012   Dubbo

We left the van to get fixed a little before 9am, and headed out to Taronga Western Plains Zoo.   Our membership to Adelaide Zoo got us in for free, much happiness!!

The zoo was nothing like I imagined, I thought it would be like Monarto (dry and dusty, with very large open plains areas for the animals, rather than enclosures).    It was more a cross between Cleland National park and Adelaide zoo with the animals that are at Monarto.   It was a really lovely, lush green, you could drive your car on the road through the park, there were people on bikes and in electric buggies.   All of the animals were in large enclosures, not as big as at Monarto

We were quite lucky with our day, we seemed to be in the right place at the right time, the talks the keepers gave were enlightening, we spent ages with the giraffes, there were a few baby ones, took heaps of photos, I was in my element.   Next we listened to an interesting talk about the elephants, then a lady told us the Siamangs were fed at 12pm, so we wandered over, there were only 2 and a baby, I could have spent all day watching them.   They were on an island but after a while the keepers lifted a rope so they could climb over to another island out  of the sight of tourists!!   It was a magical day, the sun shined, the animals did their thing and we enjoyed every minute. What surprised both of us was how long we stayed there, we aren’t the sort of people to linger around, but we spent the best part of 4 ½ very enjoyable hours there.

After buying a few more postcards, we headed off to pick up the van.    Evidently the electrical fault was a faulty hot water element, they also fixed up our sliding door that had stopped sliding!!     It didn’t take long before we were set up in the caravan park, right across the road from the dump point!!    No funny smells just yet!!  J   We were sat outside enjoying a cuppa when a very large bus pulled up full of children about 7 years of age and all proceeded to file out and into the building over the road from us, here is hoping they sleep well!!

Greg washed the car and as he was just getting set up he saw a dragon lizard sunning itself on the grass. He had fun trying to get it stirred up to get a photo.

Time to organise dinner, cheese platter tonight, will have a cheers to you all

Cheers!