Road Trip 2016 - Day 25 (1st August) - Western Plains Zoo Dubbo!!

With the weather forecast promising 19 degrees and no showers for today, we set off for the short drive to Taronga's Western Plains Zoo.

We purchase our tickets online whilst waiting for the gates to open for us to enter. We save 10% by doing it this way -- woohoo!!

I get a Seniors Card discount here as well - and now that I am getting over the feeling of being "old" -- I am using it wherever possible -- with the little savings starting to add up. 

First stop is the cycle hire shed where we get ourselves some old fashioned bikes. No gears and back pedal brakes - these are cheaper and we figure will do us as it is a fairly flat circuit we embark on around the zoo.

First stop is for the keepers talk at the Lemurs from Madagascar.  They are very very cute!!

Now we manage to find the Black Rhinos in time for the keeper feeding and talk as well. They will eat every bit of the branches hung and we can hear this one pictured crunching through the bigger pieces.

And then it's the White Rhino's - not that we could really see any differences with our untrained eyes.

Except to me the White Rhinoceros seem to have more folds of skin hanging off them.

Even the Rhino baby is huge - ugly - but at the same time cute!!

I have not got room to include all the animals we see today  -  so this is a selection of our favourites only!!

We did spend quite a bit of time watching the giraffes and the 4x babies they have. They had one born New Years Day (2016) and then the other three were born over the next 6 weeks - so they have quite a successful breeding program at the moment.

There is the big "dadda" - he has much darker colouring to all the others - and is much much bigger.

The rest of the adults we see are females.

They look very awkward when bending down to feed off the ground - as this one was!!

But of course the babies are the favourites!!

Giraffes give birth to the worlds tallest baby!!! This is the only one Moores was allowed to cuddle!!!

We see the beautiful Cheetahs

A couple of elephants playing with a metal tube that we think must have had a treat in it - they kepte reaching up and banging it against the pole it was attached to.

The keeper did a interesting talk about the Hippos and showed us how they are trained to open their mouths on command - so they are able to inspect their teeth

We love all the different monkeys that they have at this zoo --

* the White-Handed Gibbons were my favourites -- 

* and this guy just seemed to want to be a "poser"

Our last animal for the day were the Galapogas Turtles - who were all inside in a shelter sleeping because it is cold for them - they were kind of half awake and checking us out.

And there was even a baby one 

After the zoo we did a bit of shopping and walk around the centre of town - Dubbo is really quite a big centre.

We did have a very brief look into the Old Dubbo Goal (which I have been through years ago) - 

Just at the entry to the Goal they are pulling up the old pavers - as they are wooden, and after all these years, are being damaged by white ants - and so they are trying to repair them. 

I have never before seen wooden block pavers in any of my travels!!!

I liked the sign on the entry door to the Goal!!

This brings us to the end of our stay in Dubbo.