DAY 7 - 24/02/2010 - Dubbo, NSW & East Guyong, NSW

We packed up our van and left the park as we had no intention of returning after the zoo visit. We returned to Dubbo Zoo and we hired bikes for this occasion. All the animals were up and about this morning. It was much cooler today and obviously more appealing weather for them. As always the monkeys were very entertaining. They paraded around and posed for the spectators. The loud noises they made are hard to explain but all I can say is that I was on the phone to my sister at the time and she found it difficult to hear me properly because of how loud these monkeys were.

 

We left the zoo around midday and headed towards Orange. We set up camp in Macquarie Woods-Vittoria State Forest in East Guyong. 26km SE of Orange. It was our first free camp. There were other campers there but everyong was a fair distance away from each others site. The portable shower worked great.

Loved the scenary here. Lots of pencil pines and green rolling hills.

DAY 6 - 23/02/2010 - Dubbo, NSW

We didn't leave Lake Keepit as early as we wanted and the drive to Dubbo took longer than first estimated.

We arrived in Dubbo around lunchtime. The girls handled the drive surprisingly well.

Our decision was to go straight to Dubbo Zoo and get a 2 day pass. We drove around the zoo track today with the intention of hiring the bikes tomorrow. It was the hottest part of the day so probably not a good time to view animals as most were sitting in the shade or sleeping. The Zebra's and the Giraffes were pretty cool and so were the Rhino's. We were up pretty close to these animals.

We set up camp at Dubbo City Caravan Park. We found out later that afternoon that 2 days ago some campers had been robbed while they were asleep in their vans. Cant say that I would be in hurry to visit Dubbo again. The caravan park was located on the main road through Dubbo and adjacent to a reserve. High fences with barbed wire surrounded us. We made sure everything outside was packed and locked away to avoid being stolen. The aerial is still not working so while the girls were asleep we got our tele fix and watched the news in the camp kitchen which was beside us.