RyersonTravels: Australia 2019 - Days 19

Day 19 - Mon 15th July 2019 - Sydney - Parkes

Today we started on our road trip around North Western New South Wales.

Day 1 we drove from Sydney to Parkes Via Bathurst.

We got up early at about 6:30 so we could be on the road by 8am, but then we got ready faster than expected and actually left at 7:40. We headed down to Heathcote -out Heathcote Road to Liverpool and then along the Great Western Hwy heading up into the Blue Mountains. We stopped Briefly at the foot of the mountains at Glennbrook vistors info center for a toilet break (and to look in the gift shop for the kids) and then Drove to Wentworth Falls Lake where we met up with Melanie and her family for morning tea. It was really quite chilly in the mountains this morning.

After a very brief stop - it was too cold to stop for long we headed over the mountains to Lithgow where we did a short detour to see the house that my Dad's Grandfather had lived in.

Back on the road to Bathurst and our first "Big" thing of the trip - the Big Gold Panner.

And then Lunch on the banks of the Maquarie River at Berry Park. Still really cold out.

The main reason we had wanted to stop in Bathurst was to see and drive Mount Panorama. A big racing circuit - home of the Bathurt 1000 motor race.

We stopped at the top of the track and Nick - who had just got his learners licence - got to drive thr track for his second ever driving lesson.

After two laps of the circuit we headed for Orange - a quick stop for petrol on the outskirts and I took over driving Mels car. Dad then directed us into the center of Orange so we could stop at the vistors info place for toilets and souveniers. Great New car and now I have to figure out to to reverse park it! Thankfully there was a lot of room so I had no problems.

At the vistors info center we picked up a brochure about the Animals on Bikes sculptures I had read about. A whole bunch of local artists have made metal sculpures of animals on bikes and they are spread along the road to From Molong to Yeoval so we headed out that direction. Some of those sculptures were so cool.

I really loved Lizzy the frilled neck lizard.

And Road Runner and Coyote are always cool.

At Yeoval Nick took over driving again.

And this time got a lesson in driving on dirt roads.

Beautiful Aussie scenery on the road back towards Parkes.

There wer a bunch of Emu's in one of these pictures but Ic an't find them anymore!

We had booked two rooms at the Henry Parkes Motor Inn in Parkes. It was a nice little motel right in downtown Parkes. One room had a king bed in one room and three singles in a separate bedroom and our second room had a queen and three singles in the same room. We gave Grandma and Grandpa the main bed in the two bedroom apartment and the three little kids took the second bedroom

Whilst Mel, Nick and Ernie took the three single beds in the other room and I got the queen. We walked just down the road to the Parkes Services Club for dinner. According to their menu they had lots of Gluten Free food available but the reality was quite different - we finally ended up with some plain chicken for Mum - great how exciting! Mum, Dad and I took a walk around the town in the evening (trying to find somewhere to buy milk) and the rest of them retired to the motel.

Day 20 - Tue 16th July 2019 - Parkes - Dubbo

We had breakfast in our Motel rooms then hit the road. First stop was the lookout at the top of the hill behind town.

Somebody was feeling the cold this morning

This lookout was also the war memorial and not only did it have the big obelisk memorial.

and obligatory big guns.

But it also had these gardens set out. For each war they had a small section of garden planted with typical vegetation that they would have had to fight in in that war.

We then drove just north of Parkes to the CSIRO radio telescope.

This is the telescope that they used to pick up the transmissions from the Apollo 11 moon landing when the moon was in the southern hemisphere and we were there 2 days before the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Unfortunately this meant that we were two days early to be able to go inside the telescope so we just had to stick with checking out the visitors info center.

We were lucky though that we actually got to see the dish turning around and being repositioned a couple of times.

We hung around for a while - watch the 3-D movie that they had on offer and then decided to have morning tea in one of their shelter sheds.

The kids had fun trying out the whispering dishes where you can stand in front of one dish and due to the configuration of the two dishes you can hear perfectly what someone standing in front of the other dish across the yard is saying.

After getting our fill of telescopes for the day we headed north to Peak Hill and the gold mine there.

This gold field started out as underground mines but once they had found everything the could that way they went back and dug out a open cut mine. the colours in the hole are absolutely beautiful.

We did a short walk around the rim of the cut then headed for Dubbo Zoo. This zoo was one of the first open plains zoo's where they try and minimise the amount of fences around the animals utilising moats and trenches to keep the animals inside. We stopped at the first picnic grounds inside the zoo for lunch.

Then started checking out some of the animals.

Elan

Hippos

White Rhino

cheetah

Everyone had fun playing on the elephant sculptures.

The elephants gave us a good show. This guy spent a good 10 mins rolling this log over and over.

We hurried to the Lion enclosure so we could hear the keepers talk about them.

And that was enough for day 1. We headed for our B and B in the center of Dubbo. A beautiful old house.

with so many interconnecting rooms - I kept getting lost.

After a short rest we headed out to spend the evening with my cousins daughter and her family. Vicky and her husband Tom and three kids are currently living in Dubbo so we had to catch up with them whilst we passed through. Lexie made immediate friends with their dog Izzy.

And the rest of us got busy making a fire in the biggest fire pit I've ever seen.

Josh and Ernie and Vickys two oldest kids had a ball throwing sticks - and trees onto the fire.

As the sun went down we ordered pizza to eat around the fire.

Then got on with toasting some good marshmallows.

Day 21 - Wed 17th July 2019 - Dubbo Zoo

Today was spent touring around Dubbo Zoo again. We only just scraped the edges of it yesterday and thankfully all tickets are good for two days.

Today we hired bikes to get us around the zoo. Mel, Nick Ernie and Eddie all got a bike and Lexie, Josh and I got two bikes between the three of us.

Then Dad drove his car and whoever didn't feel like riding that stretch could drive with him (Or in my case I just walked most of it when I wasn't riding Josh or Eddies Bike)

We headed into the park

First stop African Wild Dogs - sleeping and not very interesting.

Next up the Black Rhinos.

And Meerkats

Then rode up past the Giraffe and Zebras

At this point we split up. The big boys took off on their own and we arranged to Meet with Mum and Dad at the Tigers, then found that Josh was no where to be found - he'd gone off after the big boys!

I walked in the direction I thought he would go and thankfully met up with him where we had lunch yesterday. We then went on to see the white handed Gibbons.

Once we were all back together again we stopped for morning tea at the waterhole and then decided to head right back to the Elephants for the elephant talk.

We rode back via the Giraffes and Zebras again.

Then back to the Tiger enclosure for the tiger talk.

After checking out the Bongos

Nick and Ernie rode right around past the camels etc

Whilst the rest of us riders cut through the otters to the Siamang Apes where we all met up for Lunch.

After Lunch it was an easy ride down through wild Asia.