Today was zoo day!
We started the day off with an early morning walk that we’d booked. We arrived at the zoo at about 7am and a had a little bit of waiting around while others arrived. But before long we headed off on our walk with our guide, Bob. There was only us and one other family on our walk. We headed to plenty of places around the zoo, and while we didn’t necessarily get to see anything special that you wouldn’t normally see, we did get to see lots of animals when things were much quieter and hear plenty of things explained to us along the way.
It was just over two hours all up, and we walked about 3km. It was a great way to start the morning!
We then headed up to the Hire Centre to collect our bikes – plenty of people had suggested to us that hiring bikes is definitely one of the best ways to get around Dubbo Zoo. And it was. There’s really only a few areas that aren’t flat, and the hills are not steep at all. So it made for a really enjoyable day as we rode around checking out everything. Each of the kids took turns at leading us and deciding what we visited next. Generally, Dubbo Zoo is one big loop that means you see everything – but we did skip a few things along the way, and so some of the kids’ decisions meant we needed to backtrack a bit, but that was part of the fun of the day.
The zoo itself was fantastic. It’s so widely and well laid out and you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere part of the time. There was a great variety of animals for us to see, and plenty of talks and feedings as well (although we didn’t manage to make it to many). And even though it was school holidays, it didn’t really feel busy.
We decided to stop for lunch alongside the Zebras. It was just a grass hill on the side of the track – but it felt pretty special to just sit quietly and watch the zebras go about their day while we ate our lunch only a handful of metres away.
One of our favourite animals of the day was the Siamang – which is a gibbon. They’re only a recent addition to the zoo, and they were just so active and fun to watch as they jumped around from ropes and poles. And their call is just fantastic – so incredibly loud, but strangely musical as well. We spent quite a bit of time watching (and listening) to them during the early morning walk. But we couldn’t help but head back and visit them again later on in the day. Eliza in particular was taken by the Siamangs, and that was her selection of a toy at the end of the day (named Kasarna, after the female Siamang in the zoo).
We finished up at the zoo by about 3pm or so with some ice creams. And although we were feeling a bit tired, we decided to try again with the Western Plains Cultural Centre. This time it was definitely open and we could explore a bit more! There was a few great exhibits on. The first was a short exhibit about the history of the main radio station in Dubbo – 2DU. Then into the main room their museum was a huge amount of different items from the history of Dubbo, including a great series of photos of different main streets in Dubbo and a list of what shops has been in them each decade! The kids were taken by the room that was set up like a Dubbo High School room from the 1950s.
Tomorrow we’ll head down to explore a couple of other towns a bit south of Dubbo for a bit of a day trip (still coming back to stay in Dubbo tomorrow night).
