The last weekend of January, Australia had off for Australia Day on Monday. A controversial day that I have spoken about before that celebrates the anniversary of Captain Cook “discovering” Australia. As everyone knows, there was already humans most places that were “discovered” by Europeans, but in any case, the 27th of January is Australia Day and a Public Holiday so everyone has off. I had gotten a buy one get one free to the Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo from a client, so decided to plan a New South Wales road trip out there that weekend.

I worked until 3p on Saturday, then we drove to Mudgee to our AirBnB, then up to Dubbo the next day. We saw a cool kookaburra on our way out of our apartment. The route out of Sydney had us go through the Blue Mountains and through some of the areas that had bush fires in the past few months. Trees were charred and it was eerie to see it so close. We hadn’t realized how sparse civilization was between leaving the Blue Mountains area and Mudgee, so when the car was getting low on gas, we started to panic a bit. Come to find out, there is no gas station in between the Blue Mountains and Mudgee. We got into town with our gas light flashing and us so happy to have made it. Brandon was using Neutral down the hills and we turned the AC off, even though it was hot, to limp us there. Bit of an exciting way to start our trip. 🙂 Our back up plan was to stop at someone’s house and ask for gas, a lot of people seemed home and they must have it stored somewhere! Our AirBnB had the best shower curtain and huge pine cones in the yard.

Mudgee and Orange are famous areas for Australian wines. There are also a lot of cute country towns around and national parks. Mudgee is a country town in the older, quaint style. We had dinner at a local pub that was advertising the best steaks in the area. I had a steak and a local red wine and both were delicious. We passed a cool Art Deco theater in town. Dubbo was pretty modern and a bigger city and had more going on. Orange was set up more in the English style with gardens and parks all over. We had a yummy breakfast in town at Mudgee, then drove to the next country town of Gulgong which has the oldest still working theater in NSW, the Prince of Wales and a vet clinic with some crazy old equipment displayed. Then drove the rest of the way to Dubbo. We enjoyed the zoo, which is used as a vacation place for the animals and breeding site for the Taronga Zoo in Sydney. It is set up in a 5km loop that you can drive, rent a cart or bike around. We rented bikes and enjoyed it that way. They have a “African safari” you can do through their African animal area that was cool. The zoo had adorable otters, hippos and cheetahs! It was a hot day, but not near as hot as the west usually is. The further inland you get, the hotter it is and more dry heat as well. The coast usually is more humid, but cooler thanks to the breezes off the water.

After a day at the zoo, we drove south to Wellington Caves and the free Japanese Garden next to it. The caves were by tour only, so we didn’t do them, but the garden was nice. It poured on our way into Orange, where our next AirBnB was. So happy to see rain anytime here!! Our AirBnb host was really nice and had a female cat named Geoffry. We took his dinner recommendation and went to the Hotel Canobolus in town. They had nice food and the rain has cleared so we could eat in their outdoor area. We came back to our AirBnb and watched the rest of the Witcher. I enjoyed some cider we had brought. Brandon is still off alcohol to be healthier so none for him. The next morning, we ate snacks we packed and what our host provided and headed off to the actual Mountain of Canobolus to a look out, then a 3.7 km hike to Federal Falls. There is still a hard core drought in Australia at the moment, so there wasn’t actually any water falling, but it was a nice hike, hot and a lot of work with hills and steps, but nice. Made me realize that I will have to train my legs and endurance more for our NZ hike. At least it won’t be hot when we do that one. We went back into Orange for lunch and then headed back to Sydney. A fun weekend away! We saw and did so much.