As mentioned, we had tried to go to see the Dugongs on the 2nd of Jan but the queue was ridiculous so we decided to get up early one morning (well relatively early given it was the holidays) and head to the aquarium for when it opened.

It was definitely worth it as the Dugongs were fabulous, if slightly odd looking - apparently their closest relative is the elephant and they are what ancient mariners thought were mermaids - those ancient mariners had some serious beer goggles.



As ever, we spent a good amount of time at the our two favourite exhibitions - the giant fish tank at the end and the sharks.

During the holidays (to distract ourselves from the need to pack) we decided to take a road trip to Dubbo in the middle of NSW to see the Western Plains Zoo. It was also a good test for our journey to Melbourne as it takes about six hours so all our entertainment and distraction skills would be tested.

We managed to get a campsite booked (it is the school summer holidays here) and even had an ensuite - no middle of the night dashes to the amenities block.


Unfortunately, we managed to time our trip with a little heat wave - it was 40 degrees for both the days we were there.

As Western Plains is an open range zoo, on the first day we hired bikes (we had brought the kids' bikes) and enjoyed the view as we cycled round - as we were away from the coast, there was no humidity so when we got up some speed we were able to cool down. Adam and Emily did really well considering the track was about 6kms - Adam probably did twice that as he kept going on ahead and then coming back.



Although the zoo is "open range", it doesn't actually mean you can walk among the animals but they have a brilliant moat/fence/different levels system that means it feels like the animals could just walk past you at anytime.



As it was a little bit hot we left about 2 as we were slowly dying - luckily the car didn't get too hot as we spectacularly left one of the car windows open!!

Thankfully the campsite had a pool so we cooled down and the kids (and Colin) has fun on the jumping pillow

On the second day  we took the car with the all important air con (mercury hit 47 at one point) - as the zoo is a one-way loop we ended up going around about six times as inevitably we would be at one side and realise there was a talk at the other side!

At the end of the day, as we were saying goodbye to the meerkats, one of the keepers told us they were planning on feeding the tiger with his one carcass ('roo) of the week, so we did one more loop and watched a very happy tiger.



The trip back to Sydney was surprisingly pain free - have to admit we have bought A&E little DVD players so apart from when the battery started to die, we were able to keep them quiet for a good few hours