Dubbo and Back

Last evening we got back from a three day trip in our car to Dubbo, a town in interior New South Wales, a few hours drive from Sydney. The pictureseque drive winds through the Blue Mountains and across the countryside. With not too much time left in Australia, I try and soak up every remarkable experience. Here, it was the vastness of the countryside – miles and miles of green expanse with no sign of human habitat. Every now and then, we would pass through a settlement – some place with a quaint name and a sign that declared the population of that village/town – usually no more than a few hundred.

Dubbo is best known for the Taronga Western Plains Zoo. We hired cycles (Mohima and Mitaansh on a tandem) and went around the 6 km circuit. The zoo is remarkable not so much for the collection of animals (which you would find in most zoos) but for being well designed and visitor friendly, offering various options for transport – foot, cycle, electric cart and car.

The weather which was cloudy when we arrived, cleared up during the day, giving us an opportunity to witness the starriest nighttime sky at Dubbo. Amid mosquitoes the size of wasps, the local astronomer pointed out constellations, galaxies, Jupiter and its moons, using a neat laser pointer with a sharp focused green beam that pierced through the night sky like a light saber from Star Wars.

On our way back, we visited the Old Dubbo Gaol, where convicts were locked away in the 1800s. It is now a heritage museum with many interesting exhibits, including varieties of a hangman’s noose. The walls have pictures of its inhabitants over the years, locked away for offences ranging from chicken-stealing to murder. The building is very well preserved, and has a solitary confinement cell for visitors to experience the feeling of being alone in a pitch black chamber. We were informed that the prisoners spent the time in those cells tearing the buttons off their shirts, and scattering them around. They would then crawl around the cell looking for the buttons, and resume the game all over again when these were found.

*************************************************************************************It was only recently that I learnt that the word “Gaol” is said the same way as “Jail”. Apparently this is the British form of the word found typically in older books.