18 July 2016 – Wild beasts aplenty; and on the plate as well!

Even though I was abed by silly o’clock last evening I slept like a top awakening 10 hours later. I told The G that there must be something wrong with me but she said it was just the badness coming out. I had listened last week to a podcast on sleep that said that 8 hours a night is bad for you and that 7 or 7½ is nearer the mark. I think I am sleeping too much.

I voted with my feet over breakfast this morning; no more would I take a continental breakfast that was neither continental nor, in my opinion, breakfast. The G went up alone with Terry and Enid. I stayed behind and ate some strawberries we had purchased yesterday. And very good they were too. Tanwarra Lodge delivered its final blow by delivering no hot water so I went showerless though I boiled a kettle to shave. I was informed later that the gas bottle had expired.

The benefit of The G going up to breakfast was that she was able to lock Wazza in conversation and glean certain facts about yesterday. The proprietor of the History Hill museum is called Malcolm and it was his Father who started the thing going. Apparently said Malcolm is married and has a son but his wife has never been seen. Nonetheless, he is as enthusiastic a fellow as you could wish to meet and without people like him or his Father we should be a poorer world.

Everything you needed to know about
Mudgee but were afraid to ask

We set off to Dubbo. This meant retracing our tracks from yesterday. It’s a short 3km hop to Sofala from Tanwarra Lodge and from Sofala the road to Mudgee (or rather the major road junction at Ilford) winds up a steep hill. When we had come down the hill yesterday we were afforded a lovely view of Sofala from on high and we had purposed to take a photo on our way out. Alas, there was a fine misty rain which meant that we couldn’t take a decent picture. The weather cleared as we drove back along the Sofala Road and as we travelled from Ilford to Mudgee the sky lightened and the temperature rose.

We headed to Gulgong which is a short distance from Mudgee and not uninteresting. They have there a Royal Opera House which is in need of funds and to assist in the aim of raising them has a shop next door. This shop sells the sorts of things you find in country towns so I was able to purchase a small woollen and hand-knotted gollywog (I am not sure of the PC position of the word) and for $5 a jar of grapefruit jam.

This shop has probably looked like this for 100 years

The Prince of Wales Hotel has a pair of fossickers on the roof. You can see from the blue sky that The G has arramged excellent weather

A place on the corner of a pair of Gulgong streets

We thought we would take coffee in the Butchers Shop Café. This promised the most extensive menu including cheese melts which you could have with a choice of three toppings. The list of toppings was fairly standard except for the banana option which had us wondering. They made biscuits there and we had coffee and a couple of homemade biscuits. The coffee was decidedly average and the biscuit-maker unfortunately needs more practice. Gulgong itself is moderately interesting; it’s another of those towns whose life has been sucked out of it by the urbanisation and mechanisation of our society. It tries nobly to trade on its history and I hope it manages.

Terry was in charge of navigation (he lived in Dubbo as a boy so he knows all these parts (apparently)) and we set off toward Wellington. Our route took us across country through Goolma and we turned off well before Wellington toward Spicers Creek. The road was a good one with very little traffic and before long we reached the magnificently named Golden Highway which is the main road into Dubbo.

Green fields. We wondered what the crop was. Some of the fields stretched for miles

Our purpose in visiting Dubbo is to stay at the Zoo and to look at animals and all that stuff. I am not, as my readers will know, an animal person by any stretch of the imagination. Out my great love for The G I had acquiesced in this excursion. We were due to check in at the Zoo at 1400 so we could find our accommodation (and, if we Americans, “acclimate”) before we set off on a special tour of the Zoo.

We were early so we parked up in Dubbo High Street (what, I suppose, passes as the CBD) and I had a sandwich and found a bookshop. I nearly always find that small booksellers are so much better than large chains at stocking unusual collections. I have a rule never to enter a bookshop without coming out with a book (and, if accompanied by a young person, I require that he or she selects a book that I will purchase). This bookshop had an eclectic combination of new and highly selected old books. It was run by a lovely man who I guess was 80 and reminded me of my Father. As I bought my 3 books he locked us in conversation with a story about John Clees and the Dubbo Zoo and a sketch involving a bookshop.

We checked into the Zoo on time at 1400 and found Terry and Enid in the café giving up on what they contended may be the worst coffee in the world. This is A Big Thing. Terry and Enid were with us for the trip on which we encountered Twinkles of Omeo which was for a while the all-comers worst coffee champion. Subsequently, I had a coffee (I couldn’t get past the first sip) at Ballarat Station which, in my opinion, was perhaps even worse than Twinkles. Terry and Enid believe that the Dubbo Zoo Café is a third contender.

There is outside the Zoo Information Centre a large and brightly-coloured plastic hippo. I learned later that 45 of these had been sold raising some $460,000 for the Zoo’s rhino breeding and field conservation programs. I wish I had known. I could have been tempted by one of these beasts though I am not sure that The G would have authorised the necessary expenditure.

One of these would do me just fine

We drove to our accommodation which turned out to be rather good. It’s a sort of quasi-tent with a deck that looks out over a faux savannah. Faux it may have been but there were giraffes browsing and clearly visible from the deck. The place is to be commended for providing a “pillow menu”. The G asked if I wanted to choose but this was too much for. As it happened the pillow I had (perhaps The G chose it) was quite satisfactory. What did impress us was that the face flannels were fashioned origami-style into an elephant.

Origami elephant made of two flannels. I should have looked more closely as I could have made this my party piece

A pillow menu: cool!

Your humble scribe at work on the deck. Note the giraffe and another animal in the background. The G done good

We settled in (which took all of 5 minutes) and then we assembled for the tour. I learned from The G that there were two tours: the afternoon tour and another tour at 0700 the following morning. My heart sank as I realised that I would need to spend more time in close proximity to animals than I ever had. As it was we boarded a bus with our guide Jake and we set off to see the following wild beasts:

Wild dogs: weird objects these and they make a very un-doglike noise. They're impossible to domesticate

Black Rhinoceros: these are pretty big (though not as big as the White Rhinoceros) and, after my own heart, are not social animals. My heart warmed when Jake said that the best thing for a Black Rhinoceros is never to see another one (unlike the White Rhinoceros which is a sociable chappy)

Hippopotamus: idle buggers near as I can tell: there two senior specimens sculling around but a junior beast obliged the crowd by eating lettuce

Lions: The male dude was cool, great mane – looked like Aslan

Elephant: This one os called Cuddles. Clever buggers elephants: this one ate peanuts out a polythene container

After this veritable but sequential menagerie of animals we returned to our tent. There was a dinner included preceded by a wine tasting (the purpose of which was really to sell you a bottle of wine for dinner). There was a passable pinot noir and a very acceptable pinot grigio (Frog Rock). There was also a pinotage from South Africa which we selected. Terry and Enid took the pinot grigio so we were well-served between us. The food was rather good and there was lots of it. It was supposed to be African-themed though the connection with that vast continent was perhaps a little tenuous.

We had crocodile, barramundi in coconut, lamb backstrap, some sort of stew thing with meat, pearl cous cous, chicken legs, a potato and pumpkin thing, and zucchini and broccoli. There was also damper which was very good. I had a magnificent sundae for my desert which we found paired magnificently with the pinotage.

We were early to bed as is our wont. The night was very warm (it had been at least 20 all day) so we left the doors to the deck open the better to hear the baying of wild animals and the roaring of lions. We did hear the roaring of lions which had thought would soothe us but in the end we slept fitfully I think because we knew we had a 0700 start and the alarm set for 0630.