Little Men in My Library

At the last minute we decided to include the Western Plains Zoo in our holiday itinerary.  It seemed like a crime to drive right passed it and not stop and spend the day. 

If you are planning a visit make sure you plan on spending the whole day, or better still the two whole days that your ticket entitles you too.   The zoo is so large that it’s just not possible to see it all comfortably in a short time frame.  In fact it’s so large you have to drive or ride around it.  Of course you could endeavour to walk but boy will your feet be tired.  We used a combination of driving and walking.  I acquired a map the night before we visited and planned out the best car parking places so that we could get out and walk around the largest number of animals before having to move the car again.  We also cheated a little and skipped all the Australian animals as we get to see these all the time at most animal touristy places.  The safari type animals were the animals that we rarely get to see so that was our focus for the day. 

The roads in the zoo and my munchkins tagging along behind.

Off on a walking path now and my munchkins are still tagging along behind.

Their little legs started to fade after half way around the zoo and they needed a motivated dad to see a few more priority animals.

We also planned out which zookeeper talks we’d like to see and which session would be best to attend according to where we would be in the park at the time it was on. (Bear in mind that the road is one way so you’d have to drive around the whole circuit to get back to animals at the start of the circuit).   I highly recommend planning out your visit beforehand to avoid the stress of thinking and pondering when you arrive.  You also need to remember that you can’t do and see everything so consider your priorties.  For us we weren’t interested in the elephant or otter talks as we have done both of these at Australia Zoo.  We hadn’t however been to a rhino, hippo or Siamang Ape presentation so these were our priorities for the day.

Oh and you’ll be surprised how close the animals are.  I expected the animals to be quite far off but pleasantly they were easily seen and often very close.  There are very few visually obstructing fences but instead they use a ditch and electric fence type system.  Most of the animals are on the same level as you so you feel like you are roaming around with the animals.   Of course this is not the case…thankfully.

Here’s a few photos of our favourite animals:

A male white rhinoceros

A "discussion" between rhinos.

A meerkat

The meerkats were much smaller than I expected.

"Happy" the hippo…yes that’s really his name.

As close to a rhino as the boys wanted to be.

A bongo – have you ever heard of or seen a bongo?  We hadn’t.

Riding cement elephants because they don’t look favourably on riding real ones anymore.

Nit picking Gibbons

A Siamang Ape

Our absolute favourite animals at the zoo were the Siamang Apes.  To the unknowing eye they look like ordinary old primates.  Very cute. 

But if you ever visit the zoo at Dubbo you absolutely must go to the Siamang Ape talk.  Here you will here the apes sing.  Okay they are not serenading you at all.  They are actually telling you to get away as they have no intentions of sharing their meal with you.   My boys sat glued to their rock laughing with the crowd at these hilarious and marvelous animals.  I’ve never heard anything like it.

My own little monkeys sitting on a rock

They make their "singing" noises by puffing their neck up with air and releasing the air in different ways.   Apparently they have five different sounds which they put together in various ways.

A "singing" Siamang Ape

Puffed up air sacs.

Now because there is no way to describe the noise these animals make, I’ve included a few videos.  Make sure you have your volume on. 

Singing Monkeys1 from Tracey L on Vimeo.

Singing Monkeys2 from Tracey L on Vimeo.

What more can I add to that…funny isn’t it?  These animals alone are reason to visit the Western Plain Zoo at Dubbo.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 1:46 am and is filed under Holidays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.