A month in Sydney – camping day 8: Dubbo to Goobang National Park | alison richards

Morning in Dubbo was a cold and dewy affair, but the sun rising over the fields was just beautiful. We had breakfast, packed up our swag (we were getting good at this camping lark!) and drove off.

Taronga Zoo, which owns the zoo in Sydney, has an offshoot in Dubbo called Western Plains Zoo. I'd been to Dubbo a few times but never to the zoo. So, since we were out that, we went to the zoo for the day! It was great, a good selection of animals that looked almost like they were out in their natural habitat.

I think my favourite animals were the cheetahs. We went while there was a feeding show on and the looks they had on their faces was just hilarious. I also really liked the Przewalski's Horse or Tahki, a Mongolian horse that is apparently the only wild horse left in the world (sadly, I didn't get a photo of these). And the giraffes and meercats were fun to watch, as they had such personalities!

Just outside of Dubbo, I made Josh stop so I could take a photo of this beautiful store.

While waiting for food, the cheetahs had this shocked look on their faces. Oh it made me laugh!

A very old tortoise – I think he was about 120 years old

From Dubbo, the next stop was Parkes. We drove through some interesting towns on the way there, one that I took a note of was Peak Hill, I think I'd have liked to see more of that. But we were running late to see The Dish before it closed. It might be only Australians who are familiar with this movie, but The Dish is a great movie, Australian or not. I had my reservations about it, because I generally don't much like Australian films or TV (I'm a bad Aussie!), but it is really light-hearted and genuinely funny, and based on a true story. Anyway, we went to The Dish, otherwise known as the Parkes Observatory, to learn more of the story of this great instrument. It was fascinating and I wish we'd had a bit more time there to read all the boards.

Also, while at the observatory, I saw this weird car-thing in action: Josh, with his Land Rover Defender, always waved at other Defenders like they were part of a club. I thought this was a little weird. Then at the zoo, I saw a Land Rover come in, spot Josh's and park next to it. Then when we came out of the observatory, there were TWO Land Rovers parks next to his. So weird.

The Dish in all its glory, listening to the skies

“Turns out that Parkes is the biggest radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.” “What’s it doing in the middle of a sheep paddock?”

We drove into Parkes to get some supplies (and WINE!) at Aldi, then sped off to the Goobang National Park. We were racing against the sunset to get there - the campsite was a good hour away and it was starting to get dusky. We made it there before we lost the light (after bumping down the dirt road into the National Park at slightly higher speeds than normal).... and who was there but our two Land Rover friends from The Dish. We set up camp quickly, then set a fire and made dinner surrounded by gum trees.