Go west young man!

The Princess Bride and I made a snap decision to venture out to Dubbo for a couple'a days to take the Potholes to the Western Plains Zoo....
We left in the wee hours at sunrise on a Monday and had a fairly good run out to Dubbo, stopping for morning tea at Dunedoo.
After luncheon we visited the Old Dubbo Gaol...Mick was fairly scared to walk through the cell buildings, but other than that we all enjoyed learning about the prison system of the early colonials.

We then ventured out to Traintasia, a little model railway hobby shop that has an impressive working model railway setup to look at. Jimmy D is train mad! and was very impressed!

On Tuesday we arrived at the gates at 9:05 am and made our way in for our first day at the zoo...
We elected to drive our car around the zoo, safari style, although one can ride a bike or hire an electric buggy...Most of the animals were out and about, despite the hot weather, which was adelight to all, and we managed to catch feeding time for a lot of them on the way around...

The best thing about this zoo, is it's designed so you can get uninterupted views of the animals in a more natural looking enclosure. We left the zoo after lunch and headed back to the caravan park so the "potholes" could have a swim, then had a rest before heading over to my Brothers place for a barbeque dinner with his family.

Wednesday was our biggest day, leaving early (6:20am) to be at the zoo for a guided early morning walk. This was recommended by John (my brother) and was well worthwhile as we went behind the scenes on the walk, guided by a zoo volunteer, who had heaps of stuff to talk to us about the animals etc on the way round!!...even hand fed the Giraffes!

The walk was topped off by a cooked breakfast at the zoo restaurant....and no, the captives are not on the menu!

After breaky we left the zoo, packed up at the caravan park and headed to Parkes to see "the Dish", well worth the effort to see, with a very nice visitor centre, and excellent cafe with fantastic blackberry jam scones....yum!..recommended!

We then proceeded home via Wellington and Gulgong, (the ten dollar note town), not that going that way really saved us any time but Michelle had never seen Gulgong and its really narrow streets....
In all a very educational few days, enjoyed by all....

Camping is intense.....well... in tents anyway!

Took two of the potholes camping for their first time the other week. We borrowed a friends "big" tent as my 25 yr old A-frame hiking tent would not have been big enough...The elder of the two had been looking forward to a camping trip for yonks, but his 1 year younger sibling wasn't so keen and took a little encouragement ("you're going!").

I decided to take them to the Watagan Mountains, which are not too far from home, and have plenty of camping grounds to choose from. We set up camp in "The Pines " camping area, which was quite serene and appeared better kept than others nearby we looked at.
The boys were excited and couldn't wait to erect the tent, (we had put it up in the front yard days before as a trial run so we knew how it went together!) and we had it assembled in no time!
As it has been very dry I didn't expect there to be a lot of water in the creek, as was confirmed on our afternoon hike down to the swimming hole, with just a trickle of water flowing, so we continued our trek east for a while, enjoying the shady track through the forest. On our return the first sign of discontent was apparent...with..shock horror ..the Pit Toilet!.."I can't sit on that toilet! I'm scared I might fall in!" Mikey exclaimed "and it smells!"....It took several trips and some convincing to get "the job" done...oddly enough his younger brother had no real issues with the pit toilet!

Dinner was a fairly easy sausage sandwich affair cooked on the gas stove and dessert was chocolate pudding made in the drinking cups with cold milk from the esky. Yum! and a nice warm hot chocolate at suppertime....it was fairly cool at night up there!
The lads were itching for me to light the gas light, as they had never seen one before, and pestered me until sunset, when I finally felt it was dark enough to warrant ignition! They were heaps impressed by the light output and were happy that it shed enough light to make them feel safe from predators around the camp...lol:-) Mind you, were none too happy when I extinguished it to do some star gazing later in the night!!
They slept well in the tent (phew!) and I was only disturbed once in the night for a "tinkle"...
I woke around 7:30 am and they around 8am...Breaky was full on bacon n eggs n juice,... nothing like a cooked breakfast to kick start the day!
That morning we went on a hike of a few k's up to the picnic grounds and around in an arc following tracks and roads back to the campsite. "Jimmy" was not really impressed with all the walking and was ready to "go home" well before we arrived back at camp!
We packed up the tent and crammed all the gear back in the "family truckster" and headed off to take a leisurely route home looking at Boardinghouse Dam and some spectacular lookouts on our way back.
I think they'd do it again (they said they would) and next time I'll take them to the beach to camp and we'll take "Herbie" our five year old as well to see how he goes....