Derek does Dubbo (with Margaret)
10th - 13th June 2011.

For the long weekend trip to Dubbo, we decided to go on Friday (we already had the day off to go to Deniliquin, but that got cancelled).

We left at about 8:30 am in six degree temperatures and thought “this should be a nice day for riding, it will warm up and be a great day”. Wrong!! The temperature dropped and by the time we reached Cowra our toes were certainly feeling it. A cup of coffee at the Scottish restaurant and we were back on the road again.

A fairly uneventful trip to Dubbo, except for the road works out of Molong – I hate stopping to go through them and seeing the water truck is spraying everything to keep the dust down right in front of you. Mumble, mumble. Turned out not to be slippery so all was good. Anyway, got to Dubbo, had lunch, did some retail therapy and booked into our accommodation.

Saturday and we went for a ride up though the Warrumbungle National Park, something we haven’t done since the early seventies. The road through the park is now all sealed which we were grateful for, as the last time it was dirt, raining and cold, plus we ended up laying in some lovely mud after falling over in it. Going in via the tourist road we came across the biggest mob of Emus we have ever seen. OK, so it was an Emu farm, but there were heaps of them. Went to the Siding Springs telescope to nearly get blown off the hill (oh, and it was bloody cold to boot).

Back through Coonabarabran and the back roads through Binnaway, Coolah and Dunedoo to Dubbo. Decided to stop in at the Dubbo City Caravan park to see if the rest of the contingent had arrived from Canberra just as they were checking in. Only a small group (Al and Lyn Munday, Ian and Sally Paterson and Judy Perry) made the trip. They settled in, we went back to our motel and then caught up for dinner at the pub nearby.

Sunday dawns and it’s off to the zoo for all of us. We walked (we were only 1.5 kms from the entrance) while the others caught a cab. For something different we all clubbed together to hire a cart (fancy painted six seater golf type). This turned out to be a waste as we only had it for three hours and we ended up walking most of the zoo anyway.

The zoo was absolutely packed. I guess that’s what happens when it is a long weekend and there is nowhere to go so that the family can swim. The zoo was great as usual, although there weren’t as many of the animals on display as I would have thought (or remember from previous trips). Ian took heaps of photos, although I’m a little concerned regarding the ones he took of copulating Meerkats (what does that say about him?). By midafternoon, we had enough and went back to our motel for a nanna nap – yes we walked back too.

Sunday night found us back at the hotel for more food and drink. Al and Ian stayed a while to watch the MotoGP on the big screen while the rest of us retired for the night.

Monday was an earlier start because we went a longer way home via Parkes (where we stopped to visit Al’s mum), Forbes, Grenfell and Young. Interesting thing about Young on a Monday of a long weekend in the middle of winter – not much open for lunch. While Ian, Sally and Judy has what looked like a fairly substantial lunch of soup and things, we opted for something a lot lighter (a roll from Baker’s Delight). We seemed to be eating very large meals over the weekend.

As we had a bit further to go we said our goodbyes and headed safely home.

We thoroughly enjoyed our weekend, thanks for organising it Al and Lyn.