Years 5 & 6 enjoyed their recent excursion to Dubbo Western Plains Zoo as part of the Future Rural Leaders Program. Below are some diary entries from each day, written by students. 

Tuesday 27th of May 2025          

Dubbo Zoo Trip (Bus ride, set up tents, and lion tour.)

Today I woke up at 7:00 am to get ready to head off to Dubbo, because today we are going on a trip to Dubbo zoo. We will be staying at the zoo, and doing night and day zoo tours. I then arrived at school but had to wait because the bus gets here at 9:30. I got on the bus then we headed to Dubbo. Then we stopped at Young to have recess, it was pouring down rain and the toilets stunk .This time we stopped for lunch at Peak Hill, we really just ate here nothing else happened. Then we all arrived at the zoo, and figured out we were staying at the billabong camp. After all that we headed to the lion cages, and  leaned against the fence while facing the other way to see if the lions would stalk us (they did). Then we headed back for dinner. Hope you like hotdogs!  After dinner I had a shower, ate dessert, and then we headed back to the tents. Goodnight…
Amber

Wednesday 28th May 2025

Dear Diary,                                                                                      

This morning the bell rang at 6:00. I sleepily pulled on my jumper and a pair of trackies and trudged out for a breakfast of cereal, toast and juice. I got some Just Right, 2 pieces of toast with jam and a cup of apple juice. After breakfast I went back to the tent and got dressed ready for the morning tour. I came out and sat under the shelter waiting for the tour to start. Eventually the tour started and we headed over to the lemurs. The keeper fed them defrosted frozen vegetables and they fought over who ate first. The ones that weren’t eating were doing yoga poses in front of the heat lamp. We then fed the bongos fresh leafy twigs. There were 2 bongos. The bongo is the second biggest breed of antelope with only around 70 wild ones left. We moved onto the hippopotamus and fed it a full head of lettuce. I learnt that hippos can’t swim, they walk along the bottom of the waterway until they need air, then they just launch themselves to the surface and breathe in some air they can hold their breath for about 10 minutes. Finally we went and saw the zebras. Did you know zebras are black with white stripes? You can tell because their nose and hooves are black.

We came back to camp and got ready to go to the Education Centre. On the way there we got lost because the teachers couldn’t read the map properly. Once Mrs Mitchell got the map we finally made our way to the Education Centre. At the Education Centre Kelly, the education person, taught us about adaptations and physiological features of the platypus. We then had recess and brainstormed ideas to save platypus in the wild. We went to Plat HQ and met Mackenzie and we just missed out on going into the quarantine room because they caught a wild platypus on Saturday. As we were heading back to the Education Centre we stopped at the wildlife hospital and saw a wombat getting a check up. Eventually we got back to the Education Centre and had pizza for lunch. 

After lunch we were free to explore the zoo until camp opened at 4pm. We started at the African wild dogs and ended at the lion cubs. My favourite animals were the meerkats. They are so cute. Finally after hours of walking we headed back to camp at 3:50. The people who weren’t tired played bull rush but the people who were tired sat down and played charades. 

Trey, the new camp person, let us in at 4:30 and we all rushed in to sit down. Around an hour later the Public School came back to camp. We had hotdogs and pasta bake for dinner and then another night tour. On the night tour we visited the Aussie animals. My favourite was the koala and her joey. On the tour we saw wallabies, possums that weren’t supposed to be there, echidnas, an emu, a quokka and kangaroos. We came back to camp and had cake and hot chocolate for supper. We had showers and now I’m in bed finishing off today's story.
Love Alice

Thursday 29/5/2025

At 7am we woke up to the bell going off. We got over to the tables and had breakfast - toast and cereal. We then got on the bus and drove down to the gift shop so everyone could get a souvenir. I got a stuffed lion and some playing cards. Finally we went and saw the spider monkeys and then we got a photo in front of the bus with the Adelong Public School. We got on the bus and started heading home.  We stopped at Young to get Macca's for lunch. When we got back on the bus half of the people on the bus fell asleep and the rest of the people on the bus watched The Smurfs and Surfs Up. It was such a long way and we were all so tired. Finally we drove into Adelong, said goodbye to the public schoolers and dropped them off at their school. Then our school thanked Jimmy the bus driver as we hopped off the bus to go home. It was the best trip ever!
Braxton