Z-day! No, not zombies, but a massive open plains zoo, woohoo!
We had a nice bacon breakfast and packed up the rooftop camper quickly and left the camp spot by 7:45 am. Arrived at the zoo about 20 minutes later and the front gates were wide open so we drove straight in.
We were expecting the place to be just starting up for the day, however the car park was almost at capacity, even on this Wednesday! We parked the car and walked in to the reception area, verified our tickets and were told that we could drive through the zoo, rather than hiring an electric cart or a bike for the day.
Needless to say, on a low 30 degrees day, the car’s air conditioning was put to the test, cooling down the cabin every time we got into it.
Driving slowly through the park, the first animals we saw, and took many many pictures of, were the Meerkats. There were about eight of them in the enclosure with glass front panels, being almost accustomed to the presence of tourists. They went about their business of digging for bugs, looking out for predators and generally just being very photogenic little creatures. All the while completely ignoring the near constant taunts from the tourists “aww”, “Hey, hey look over here!”, whistling and a whole lot of clicking.
We walked a little further and saw a very sleepy Rhinoceros, scratching his underbelly on a log in his enclosure, looking perpendicular to the camera, I ended up with some very detailed close ups of his face. So many wrinkles and lines, the photos seemed to bring out every small feature.
Moving onto the next space was for the African Dogs, though they were all still waking up and basking in the sun, as were many of the other animals in the morning on this day.
Having a telephoto lens in an open plains zoo is very handy, but having a 2x magnifier that couples to that lens makes all the difference. I was able to get up high in the lookout and get some very nice pictures of many of the animals. This includes a new baby elephant, born in April 2017!
We walked and drove all around the zoo’s 5km round trip road. Stopping half way for lunch and some much appreciated cold ice creams, not without the expected flock of scavenger birds, ready to pick up any and all scraps left behind.
Once we had made it to the end of the track, we went through one more time quickly, as you could use the same ticket throughout the whole day as many times as you like. I got out and ran around like a mad man, taking quick pictures of the animals that were now very active.
In doing so, the animals I was taking pictures of noticed the sudden movement of me running around and the African Dogs ran after me, as such I got some interesting photos of them jumping into the green water moat between the enclosure and the perimeter fence! There was one Rhinoceros that paid attention to me running past, and turned to watch me jog by. I never would have thought to just move about a lot to grab the attention of the animals, and I suppose nobody else wanted to do that either.
Once we had out fill of the various animals, great and small, we headed out of Dubbo. Looking to end up at Carcoar Dam, where my parents were waiting, having gotten there yesterday late at night. They had a spot picked out for us where the car would be as level as it could be, so we didn’t roll out of the rooftop camper through the night. A rock and a thick branch were chocked up under the front wheels, and I drove up onto them. Teetering on the very top centre of the makeshift chocks, the car was reasonably level.
The wind picked up as soon as we arrived, and was forecast to be approximately 20km/h all night long. The window covers were already set up and flapping madly, but not flying away, so they were left as is.
Heading down to Canberra tomorrow to see the war memorial and to grab a new low beam headlight bulb for the car, it blew sometime today, but is the original bulb from the factory where the car was made, so that lasted a VERY long time! I hope to keep this updated regularly, or keep a log when not in service and update this page when I come back to civilisation.