Mood:
happyG’day, all! How ya’ goin’?
Once again, I admit freely that pictures taken of zoo animals do not count. That being said, we went to Dubbo’s Western Plains Zoo with Peter and Jo last weekend. Well, to be honest, Peter and Jo set the whole thing up, including the cabin we stayed in, so basically WE went with THEM.
What a cool zoo!
To start with, it is a bit of a drive to get to Dubbo. It’s five hours north of Canberra, further west than Sydney. It’s another of the few land-locked cities in Australia, and there is really nothing there except the zoo. That being said, it’s a big “conference town” for the business world in Australia due to its “strategic” location. That means it has a lot of hotels/motels, but really nothing else.
The zoo is something of a mix between a normal zoo and a safari. All of the animals are in habitats, but there are few that have gates/walls/cages. Most of the animals are corralled by natural means, such as non-swimming animals being on a small island. That sort of thing. The zoo grounds are HUGE, and all of the animals had plenty of space, that I could tell. It was so large that visitors are encouraged to drive tot he habitat they want to see, park, and then spend as much time as they want, and then drive to the next bit they want to see. As it turns out, Peter and I rented golf carts for the day and cruised the zoo in those.
Again, zoo pictures are cheating, but this is the first echidna we'd seen here, and the bird was wild, not caged. The meercat was cute, so we posted it anyway... :)
All thanks to Peter and Jo!
