The road to Dubbo

Bird of the Day  I think a Spotted Harrier gets the tick as they are unusual most of the time.  In terms of number of birds Sulphur-crested cockatoo just fends off Galah, although the 47 Red-rumped Parrots put in a claim.

Plant of the day:  Discaria in grassland behind van park

Scene of the Day: Trees in fog near Bungendore

Art of the day:  Animals on Bicycles

Typically Australian thing of the day: a dead wombat was an early contender, but was defeated by a Kelpie standing on the steps of a shearing shed.  In turn, that gave way to cattle running across the road under supervision of a Blue Heeler with blokes on bikes looking on.

Maximum Temperature 17C  Minimum temperature -4C

Distance driven with Camper 450km without camper 0

As if to remind us why we were departing it was -4 as we drove out the gate.  Getting down onto the Plain is was also foggy, leading to much condensation falling on the car.  Would we make it to Bungendore?  Yes, we did and proceeded on though that village and on to Cowra where I intended to refuel.

At Cowarwe saw a United Servo offering a very good price on diesel so swung in.  Unfortunately something was amiss with the pump with it seeming to deliver only foam.  After about 15 minutes I had only acquired 20 litres so called it a day, paid up and left.

We headed through Canowindra to Cudal, pausing to check the Memorial and on towards Molong. Before getting to that town we came across a civil memorial marking the spot where Major Mitchell started three of his journeys (#2-4) of exploration.

We then got to Molong (which apparently means place of many rocks) and photographed the memorial, protected by a fence.

At this point we were offered advice by a chatty local outside whose B&B we had parked.   On hearing we were gong to Dubbo she said:

• Don't use the caravan park in the town, its too noisy, especially with the circus there.  (Really good to hear at this juncture.)
• Be careful as there are aborigines in Dubbo.  (Indeed there were, but so what?  the people that caused us most trouble on this trip were Anglo family groups in Lighting Ridge and (particularly) Stokers Siding.)

She then got on to more sensible ground by advising us to go via Yeovil so that we could see the animals on bikes display as part of the farm art movement.

This was actually a great show, with the only slight problem being that many of the displays were in areas were parking was definitely a road hazard!  The following are a sample of what was on offer.

A few more small towns produced more memorials and we eventually arrived at Dubbo, coming out on the road next to the Western Plains Zoo.  From there it was a simple matter of getting to our selected van park.  We had booked a site as it was school holidays and the Zoo might have been a big attraction (in fact everyone in the Park seemed to be a grey nomad heading up to North Queensland for the Winter).  We decided to go for a walk through some paddocks adjacent to the park.

To our surprise the block adjacent to the park was a juvenile training facility - I think what was called a Borstal in the UK!  We didn't flaunt our binoculars or camera in the vicinity of this institution.  They did get flaunted a little later where we spotted some copulating Black-shouldered Kites and a very large flock of Galahs.

Back at the camp we were entertained until dark by large flocks of various species perching on a dead tree before heading off to their roosts.  A meal was prepared and we retired inside the van not long after night fell (mainly to escape the chill which seemed to have followed us from Canberra),  The chill vanished when we turned on our little heater.

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