The Year 3 Excursion to Dubbo Zoo

I volunteered to join BigC and his class at the zoo.  We rocked up to the school for the 7am departure in good spirits.  

 Dubbo and Mudgee (and even Sydney) are in the throws of a heat wave. By Aussie terms that means forecast Temps today of 40-44.

 Be that as it may, the excursion was planned and we were going.  Australians are much more accustomed to warm temps and cope well. The teachers all had spay bottles with ice cold water with them and they kept spraying down the kids.

 There were two cases (or maybe more) of bottled water under the buses. The buses were air conditioned (at first, keep reading). The kids were all instructed to bring two bottles of water. One was to be frozen and wrapped in a towel. I later learned that this towel is then wrapped around the necks, under the collar of the shirt to keep the kids cool.  The kids all knew it too.

We had the best of luck if you are a child in year 3. If there was an animal with the urge to have a bowel movements today they waited until our class was watching. Blessed we are.

 This skink let go right in front of me (yay) and this rhinoceros climbed out of the water and then sprayed his excrement in a most spectacular fashion for us while I grabbed a photo of BigC.

 Luckily he was also awesome enough to show us his teeth.  Any excursion with a class of 9 year olds has the secondary benefit of reminding me why I was sensible enough to cease all procreation after blessing the planet with two offspring. Each and every child on the trip (around 120 or so) needed to tell us URGENTLY that they have previously been to the zoo.  That they saw, ummm, stuff...and then share a convoluted story about that experience.  Those without their own experiences to share were kind enough to tell us about other people they vaguely knew that had once vaguely had an experience that related in some way to a thought that wandered though their heads.

 The zoo was awesome and BigC had a fabulous time. The heat was lovely*. The animals we're animated enough, the heat considered.

On the way home the trouble started pretty early on. Our bus overheated and blew a hose about 20 minutes outside of the town.  Long time blog readers will remember that my mother and I discovered a low gas tank in about the same spot back in July and also made the decision to drive forward in to the land of no cell phone reception. Our decision ended well, this one...not as much.  After pulling over many times, turning off the AC, offloading passengers (BigC and I included thankfully) to the other bus to lighten the load, the bus finally gave up completely about 60 KM from Mudgee.  With no mobile reception we had no choice but to leave them there and call for assistance once we could. 

If a kid was going to vomit on the bus today he was never further than 2 seats away from me.  I'm like a genie! 

*this Canadian will NOT complain about heat, ever. It does not happen.  I love it.