Singapore

15 October 2012

Western Plains Zoo

We spent a most of the day yesterday at the Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo. I've visited many zoos around the world and I am extremely impressed with this one. There are no visible fences between the animals and visitors and you can drive, cycle or walk through the entire zoo.

Here are some of my pics. I have taken mostly video footage which i will edit later on.

there were....

Meer Cats

Giraffes

Antelopes

Hippos

Elephants

Rhinos

Tigers

Camels
And many many more. No doubt you'll see on Diane's blog soon......

12 October 2012

Mobile again

We're mexicans again (south of the border) on a road trip. The reason, is we attended the 50th anniversary reunion of Diane's Teachers College, this time in the nation'a capital, Canberra.
We left Brisbane and drove down the Pacific Highway stopping every 2 hours to alternate driving.

Here are some snaps from the trip so far.

First stop Nambucca River to change drivers.
 Then we continued until we finally decided we had enough driving for one day, so we pulled into Port Macquarie and booked a room in a nice resort.
The sunset was fabulous across from the resort 
Next morning we continued towards Sydney guided by our trusty Kate (GPS) who pointed us in the right direction.

We had a bit of bother across the harbour tunnel in Sydney where a car had broken down, so Kate made us drive down to Randwick before we could turn left towards Vaucluse where our daughter Carol and S-I-L David live. After a nice evening with them and a good night's sleep, Diane and I got up early to take a walk along the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean before breakfast.

The cliffs are stunning along the Vaucluse coast.
While we were in Sydney, Carol and David took us to Shark Bay for a wonderful lunch.

Shark bay on the Sydney harbour
 They also took us to see Vaucluse House where we all admired the gardens. Unfortunately the house was closed to the public on that day.
Vaucluse House has a beautiful garden
 Then it was time to move on again to the nations's capital, Canberra. The road from Sydney is very good, 4-lane highway all the way with 110km/hr speed limit, so it didn't take us long to get there.

The Black Mountain Tower overlooks the capital
 We were very busy for 3 days with the reunion but had a chance to visit the biggest celebration of spring festival, the Floriade which was in full swing in Canberra.
Masses of fields of tulips on display at the Floriade.
One of the main reasons, we drove down to Canberra instead of flying was Diane wanted to drive up into the Snowy Mountains for a hike. I wanted to see the famous Snowy Mountain Scheme. So we had planned that after the reunion we would drive up to Cooma and Jindabine for a few days.

Well on Thursday, the weather report mentioned rain or snow falls and very cold weather up there so upon investigating, we found going west would be the best (warmest) option, so we drove to Young in NSW where we are now staying overnight. The Snowy Mountains are still on our 'Bucket List.' But next time we'll go in summer. Colin, our good friend is here in Young, visiting his 90 year old mother who lives in a retirement village. So we called in and picked them both up after lunch and they showed us around this beautiful country town.
The Chinese Tribute Garden at Young
More later, we're leaving for Dubbo in the morning.

02 October 2012

Yet another Mag

Our friend Ann emailed us this story this morning. Thank you Ann,

On Thursday, Channel 7 starts screening the latest series of Beauty and The Geek Australia. New Idea magazine journalist interviewed Bernie and Sonya while they were in Sydney recently.