Day 56: Dubbo Zoo

Dubbo, is a rural city in New South Wales of around 54,000, and is home to a famous zoo: the Western Plains Zoo. I went there as a child a long time ago. We haven't gone to any zoos for a very long time and it was a bit strange doing it as adults with no kids. David had never been there, so we decided that seeing as we were travelling through, we'd take a day to check it out.

Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros

It’s a large zoo (3 square km), not at all like the little city zoos that most people are more familiar with. Most of the animals have very large areas to roam and they've made an effort to make it closer to how their wild relatives live. There's a circuit of around 5 km that you can drive, walk, or ride around. We took our motorhome and drove. I'm not sure we saved much energy, though, because we also walked over 6 km. Driving meant, though, that we could easily carry our own food and water. We drove, parked, and walked . . . on repeat, several times. I found it a little challenging to orientate myself as we went around!

Map of the zoo.

At one point along the way we met four y.o. Molly, who promptly introduced me to all her family. She's the oldest of three siblings and her mum looked weary. It's easy to see how Molly's opinions were a strong driving force in the family—she didn't hesitate to talk to us, and, I suspect she never hesitates to share her thoughts. I'm sure if we'd hung around we would have heard a lot of things her parents didn't think were appropriate to be sharing with strangers.

We saw three types of rhino. Giraffes, hippo eyes (yep, they were in the water), Tasmanian devils, elephants, wild horses, meerkats, African lions, many birds, wallabies, koalas, etc.There were lots of keeper talks, the challenge was coordinating yourself to get there. We happened upon ones at the hippos and giraffes and actually managed to organised ourselves to hear the Tasmanian Devil and platypus ones.

Meerkats

We also visited the animal hospital late in the day, and read many signs there, but didn't see much action. This zoo is involved in a lot of fascinating work in conservation as well as helping injured wildlife. Check out their website if you'd like to. We could have done more, but we went into the day pretty weary and did what we could. Again, it was a different experience without the wonder (and challenge) of children in our charge, but good nonetheless. The variety of creatures on this earth is amazing, and it's always good to be reminded of God's incredible creation.

Tasmanian Devils. We didn't see them in
Tasmania, but had to wait to NSW!
It's time like this that I wish for a camera
with a zoom lens.

African lion

Excursion to the zoo

Butterfly enclosure

I'm all tuckered out! I drove six loud, energetic 8 and 9-year olds to the zoo today. We followed the school bus that had the rest of the third grade class and parent volunteers. It's Tokyo, so we spent more than three hours driving there and back (and the zoo is only about 22km from school).

I have to say that it's a pretty good zoo, though, especially as compared to the other big zoo in Tokyo, Ueno Zoo, which almost makes you cry in places.

The zoo has a whole Australian section.
It was at this point that I wanted to
run around shouting, "I'm Australian." But
I restrained myself!

Aside from tiring, it was a good day. I'll let the photos tell the story:

Investigating insects.

A seriously large wasp—thankfully a model. These were
"my" four boys.

But there were some very large bugs,
some of them even alive.

I loved the butterfly enclosure. I was "in charge" of four
energetic boys, and they didn't hang around looking at
mere butterflies, they were after the large cats!

My favourite photo.

Some nice African animals.

The lion enclosure bus. They put meat on the outside
of the bus, which, of course, the lion got a tiny bit
excited about. In general, though, they looked
pretty bored.

One of most shocking things about the day was the
approximately 5,000 other children who were there,
most of whom were under school age. Most of them
were in groups like this, with colour-coded hats.
Thankfully it was a big enough zoo that we didn't feel like
we were fighting through crowds, but everywhere you
turned there were more kids!

Ueno Zoo

Well, previously I wrote about getting to and from the zoo, but nothing about the zoo. To be honest we were pleasantly surprised by the zoo. The only other Japanese zoo we've been to is the Sapporo Zoo and even though the kids loved it, we felt like calling the RSPCA (animal welfare association in Australia) because the animals looked very unhappy. BUT Ueno Zoo was greener and by and large the animals looked happier. We even found some Australian animals beyond the kangaroos. A couple of emus with evil eyes. Kangaroo rat, fruit bats and a couple of others I've already forgotten. The gorilla was a great one. We were looking at them through glass, when this guy hopped up and came right over to us and sat down, looking cheekily at our boys. I cannot believe I actually got this photo. The whole zoo experience, though, was a reminder of how energetic our three boys are. Our Japanese friends have two children, a girl just a little younger than our eldest and a boy just a little older than our youngest. Our boys outran them all the way. They were looking a tad ragged at the end of the day (so were we). This kind of comparison helps us feel that our tiredness at looking after our mob day after day is legitimate :-)