The Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, in fact.  Great fun and very well put together.  They’ve used a clever system of moats and dykes to separate the animals from their humans which works brilliantly. We opted to hire bikes and ride around, not realizing that it was so relatively small!  If we’d walked the whole thing it would have only been 5km or so but we’d done our usual amount of prior research (zero!).  In our heads, we thought it might be 20km around.  Much more space than a “regular” zoo, but not quite Kruger NP.  We did get very close to a couple of rhinos which I think I like even more than hippos.  It was a Sunday, open to double vaxxed, but still uncrowded.

Dubbo was pretty good to us as tourists:  we did the hilarious town Heritage walk, where we kept being shown things like a new supermarket which was on the site of some famous old hotel.  Precious few old buildings there, most having been flooded out of existence, except for the plethora of solid high-set Banks, now turned into trendy wine bars or solicitors’ offices.  Historic homestead Dundullimal is not to be missed, the Old Goal was well worth the visit and we had a great meal at The Vietnamese House.

However, our caravan education program continued apace.  It was time to go off-grid to see what was possible.  I’d filled one of our three water tanks at Lesley’s urging (don’t worry, we’ll be able to get water!) and booked 3 nights at an “overnight farm stay”.  Bulwarra B&B has a sort-of place to park a van, but it’s not a farm and it’s no place for a van to stay.   When we got there, we had to physically clear enough weed infested ground to be able to get out of the van and put out the awning.  It was also blowing a gale, so the awning didn’t go out anyway – didn’t get flooded though.  Our host arrived and was lovely, her B&B looked lovely, but her campsite was NOT.  Lots of cloud, plenty of rain and a solar panel which I couldn’t work eventually saw us run out of power and then water – not a huge success!  

On the positive side, I’ve learned to fill the tanks, sorted out the solar panel, fired up the generator and, if we can ever work out levelling ATGANI, things should be good.

Nothing daunted, we pressed on to the nearby Riverside caravan park in Wellington – what a revelation. Flat grassy site, serene outlook, sunshine, tame goats, lots of water, plenty of power, spotlessly clean, easy to access, delightful hosts, a small handful of friendly neighbours. We’d stay here again but Gill Taylor’s recommendation at the Caves park also looked perfect.

Wellington is a great little country town struggling hard to get back on its uppers, and we had lots of activities – superb caves, acceptable golf on a flooded course, local villages, a church we need to acquire, a Cow and Calf pub dinner, even decent coffee at Four Cats. It also saw us at the Burrendong Arboretum (I know…) which was pretty special and still needs some money. This is a richly deserving establishment and I suspect we are going to see hundreds of equally deserving projects across the country, with insufficient funds, when there are literally billions being dubiously distributed elsewhere. Most of them could be funded collectively for the price of a single submarine periscope/light rail carriage/football stadium. Arrrgh, he’s gone all political – but I say, “nuclear reactors and bicycle sheds”.

Sadly, we have to leave Wellington and also sadly, we have to explore our off-grid abilities further. So, on to camp in a vineyard, somewhere outside Orange. What could possibly go wrong?