Myself and Jacqui had a great weekend. Flew to Dubbo on Saturday morning in a small turbojet plane. Flying inland from Sydney, which was in itself unusual, it was surprising to see how green Sydney actually is. The suburbs have plenty of trees – certainly more than I’ve seen in any other city I’ve flow over – and there’s the Royal National Park to the south, Ku-ring-Gai to tne north and the Blue Mountains to the west.

We went straight to the Western Plains Zoo on landing and spent the morning cycling around the zoo. Jacqui was more excited by the fact that she could cycle a bike than with the animals! There were plenty of keeper talks, including one with the Siamang apes at which the two individuals performed an amazing inpromptu territorial song, and another where you could feed the giraffes.

After checking in to our safari-style accommodation, we jumped on the first of our behind the scenes tours, visiting elephants, then giraffes (which we fed again) and finishing up watching a pack of African wild dogs being fed a kangaroo carcass – probably not the best thing to see before sitting down to some lamb rump! The second tour commenced immediately after dinner and this time we called in on the tigers (completely distinterested in us), the wombat (quite happy to stand and allow us to pat/stroke her) and the hippos. We were also able to tickle the Giant Tortoises, one of which promptly farted with pleasure!

That was it for the evening, which was just as well as we were both exhausted. Rising bright and early at 7am, we got the final guided tour with a visit to the White Handed Gibbons, the Siamang apes, a stop to feed a rhino follwed by a visit to the lions. Initially they weren’t interested in our presence at all, but once we walked around to the side of their night enclosure, and they noticed there were two small kids with us, everything changed. Both of them bounded up to the fence and started pacing alongside, keeping a close eye on the child. One tired of this an went to lie down at the far side of the cage as the child had wandered away. A few minutes later the kid returned to the fence area, and turned her back on the cage as she was talking to her Dad; straight away the other lion jumped up, ran over and crouched down ready to pounce on the other side of the fence. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the child was little more than a chicken nugget!

A tasty fry-up followed, after which we checked out and wandered around the public side of the zoo checking out the animals we’d missed the previous day, and killing time until the rhino tour, which was an extra not included in the safari package. It was well worth it as we visited three difference species of rhino and were allowed to feed two (Black Rhino & Greater One-horned Rhino) and see a week-old White Rhino (already weighing approx. 80kg!)

We later spent a brief moment in Dubbo itself before jumping on the plane back to Sydney in time for Law & Order ;-) The trip is definitely worth doing, especially since the Parkes Telescope is only an hour away, so you could combine the two. I only found that out while I was already there, which pissed Jacqui off as I’d already admitted not researching the holiday. Oh well, it just means we’ll have to go back some time.