The Warrumbungle’s

We went to the Warrumbungle National Park and of course it was an excellent experience. The day after we got there we went on a 6.2 km walk through the bush/forest. One bit of the way was on bricks but the other was on dirt. The walk we went on was called spiry view. It had two fantastic views of the bread knife (a large rock that is shaped like a bread knife, well known by most people who visit and is used for rock climbing, I think). We took the pusher for Jarra for most of the way before we got to the narrow, steep and rocky track leading up to the views. We had lunch and saw some people on large rocks on the lower of the two views. The lower view was pretty but you didn’t have a view as good as the top one. The climb down was trickier than I thought but the walking sticks we had made it much easier. For the remainder of the afternoon I worked on the walking stick, with dad’s files, to make it look nicer than it was. And the next day I did the same thing, but only for a short time in the morning and afternoon. The reason for this was because Rennie, Dad, Jarra and I went for a kids walk called the ‘Kangaroo Hop’ with a lady ranger, then later on Mum, Rennie Jarra and I went ‘Pond Dipping’ with the same ranger and another lady ranger.

NO SNAKES!? NOOOOOO!

This is what I said after finding out that there were no snakes at Dubbo’s Western Plains Zoo. During our first day in Dubbo we went to the library to do some things. While we were there, a lady from Western Plains Zoo was visiting and telling children about the zoo. She also passed around a lizard that I loved, because I love reptiles. When she was packing up, I went up to her and asked if there were any snakes at the zoo. She said there was but only in a room that visiting school children could go into. Oh, I almost forgot, Jarra and I are going to be in the Dubbo newspaper. I will tell you how. When the lady was passing round the lizard, a reporter and a journilst were with her. When the lady came to me, they decided they would take a photo of me, holding the lizard, and put me in the newspaper of Dubbo. Fortunately for Jarra, he stood up with me and got in the photo. When we were travelling to Dubbo we discovered that our pump was leaking. A mechanic looked at it and said that we would have to get another one to replace it. When we went to the zoo for the first time, we went around on our bikes. The track around the zoo was 6 km. Because we doubled back a lot, we probably did about 8 km! You could hire a bike, tagalong or a buggy, which could seat 6 or 4 people. Because you had to pay $15 for each bike and $60 for each buggy, we took our own bikes. At the zoo we did lots of things like feeding Giraffes, listening to keeper talks and seeing lots of animals. While we went around I did a quiz about the animals at the zoo. There were about 8 questions on the sheet. When we had finished going around we went to the gift shop and I got a wooden snake that acted like a real snake because it didn’t droop down when you hold it at the end, it stays upright! The next day at the zoo we saw most of the same things as the day before but this time we went in the car. We phoned up a mechanics shop and a man came to the campsite and took something out. One afternoon we went to a camping store and had a look at some canoes. In the end we chose a red plastic one. At the campsite there are super sharp prickles by the name of Three Thorn Jacks. These prickles are so bad that they punctured my bike wheel twice!! Dad fixed it up but in the end we got thorn and prickles resistant tubes and put them on my bike. A few weeks ago we had soy sauce in a bottle, but I didn’t know that, so one morning I took it out of the fridge thinking that it was dark grape juice and then I took a swig of it! To my utter surprise it was soy sauce so I raced to the sink and spat it out coughing and spluttering. Anyway, back to recent events. Two days before Easter about 10 kids and 10 adults came and moved in next to us and I made two good friends. Their names were Caleb & Jacob. When we went and tried out the canoe, we were very disappointed because it kept tipping about an inch from the water line. We took it back to the shop and looked at some inflatable rafts and explained the problem with the canoe. Later that day next to the playground at the campsite there is a Bull Ants nest. We found an Ice-cream container and started collecting Bull ants in it. It wasn’t a very hard job and nobody got bitten at first. We were using long sticks to pick up the Bull Ants but we were using our hands to pick up small ants like Gold Backs, Green Backs, Black Ants and some other small ants. At the end after we had tipped them out Jacob got bitten on the hand and neck! It was Bull Ant Revenge. It was Easter on the day that Jacob got bitten by the ant. Soon after, Caleb and his family left to go back home. After that we painted boiled eggs. Once we had done our eggs, we had lunch. A short while after lunch, the remaining people went to the zoo. Soon after that we went for a walk at a place we were planning to go to before our water pump started to leak. Later that day we still hadn’t rolled our eggs. When Jacob and the other people came back we went and looked at the ants, played on the playground and then played in the bus with some other kids. There were also kids outside so I poked my head out the window and blew a raspberry or two at them. One of the girls stormed forward and blew a raspberry at me. All those people who think that girls are polite all the time are so totally wrong!!

Bendigo

For the last week or so, I have been staying with the family we bought the bus off. Their names are Robin, Phil, Angus, Hamish and Eric. Eric and I played a lot together, but I didn’t play much with Hamish and Angus because they were 12 & 14. I watched lots of movies like, Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings. One day, Dad, Rennie, Eric and I went to a discovery centre and learnt a lot about science. There was also a drop slide that only Dad and I did. Rennie was, of course, scared to go on it (No offence Rennie) and Eric wanted to go down on his knees but the staff man said he couldn’t. The slide was dead straight down for seven metres! Afterwards Eric said he would’ve gone down if he was allowed to go on his knees. Another night we all went into Bendigo to see Big Rory and the Games on the Big screen. Big Rory was a 9 foot tall Scotsman. With him he had his wife and dog. The dog was really cool. There was a rapper that used lots of swear words. I think he was clueless because there were kids everywhere. One afternoon we went on a tram ride around the city of Bendigo. We learnt a lot of Bendigo’s history. When we left Bendigo we went to a ……… Find out next time!!