Blue Gum Motor Inn

Dubbo - Home to the WesternPlains Zoo

by CdnJane

"Home to Some Incredible Tortoises"

The Western Plains Zoo wasn't my favourite zoo, but yet it was quite a fascinating place. It is a huge facility where you needed transportation to get around it, but at the same time need to be mobile enough to walk around to some of the exhibits.
You can rent bicycles or something else (brain freeze, don't remember what it was). Fortunately, for me, just as we went to rent bikes, as per my friend's desire, it started to rain quite hard, so I convinced him that using the car was the best bet. Once we got away from the rental place the rain stopped. (Do I have the magic touch, or what??!!)
I guess what I found uninspiring were the African animals that I could see at zoos back home. The Aussie and Asian/Pacific rim animals that I'd never heard of, did appeal to me. I particularly loved the huge tortoises... they were amazing.
To answer the question of what brought me to Dubbo, it was thanks to my friend, John. He didn't want me to think that NSW was just Sydney, Hunter Valley and Katoomba - he wanted me to see the real countryside. It helped that he had a shooting match in Orange, so that got us most of the way to Dubbo. The night before we arrived there had been a horrible rain/wind storm and lots of trees uprooted, and branches broken off. However, the area we were in only had some leaves ripped down, covering the streets. Didn't really see any effects of the storm on the zoo property.