Day Five - Dubbo to Tomingley

We packed up with time to spare this morning so the kids got one last jump on the beloved jumping pillow. 

Arriving at Taronga Western Plains Zoo just on opening time we had only a very short queue to deal with. We elected to walk around the 6km zoo circuit as we felt we could do with the exercise after spending days in the car. Apparently, that is not the 'normal' thing to do as we were passed by hundreds of cars and bikes over the course of the day but not a single other walker.

We managed to catch a number of keeper talks through the day which all added to the experience. The meerkats proved to be one of our favourite exhibits but I loved the Galapagos tortoises and Siamangs best.

 One tortoise walked along the fence right next to us. It was so close, we could reach out and touch it. We were surprised by how few people there were towards the end of the day. We had many exhibits all to ourselves and could capture some great photos.

We stayed watching the Siamangs play for quite some time. There was what appeared to be a family group on the island. 

The junior siamang delighted in annoying what we assume was the mum. His antics made for entertaining watching as were hers as she attempted to evade him. She finally managed to make a run for it across the ropes to the next island while junior was distracted. Her peace didn't last long as she was soon followed by both the baby and the dad.

With aching feet and lots of photos we finally left the zoo just on closing time and travelled 50km down the road to camp for the night. We were awed by massive earthworks around the town of Tomingley which we later discovered is a huge new gold mine. Fingers are crossed that we don't have noise from the mining operations all night!