I thought again about how little planning had brought us there. A Christmas trip to Condobolin had become a New Year’s night at the zoo because we had looked for something special to do on the way home, found it surprisingly affordable and decided to give it a go. The tents alone had exceeded our expectations before the giraffes began accepting carrots.
The Places We Found and the Things We Never Went Looking For
A trip home from Condobolin is generally concerned with getting home. You pack the car, make sure nothing important has been left behind and settle into the business of covering the distance, with a stop somewhere along the way to feed the passengers. On this occasion, we decided there might be room to feed a few other creatures as well.
We had been to Condobolin for Christmas, and it was New Year’s Day when the idea of doing something special took hold. Kirsten was with us, still at school, and rather than make the return journey another stretch of road to be endured, we looked for something that would give the three of us a holiday within the holiday. Dubbo Zoo offered a night in a glamping tent, which sounded like a reasonable interruption to proceedings.
The price was surprisingly modest for what appeared to be included. There would be the overnight stay, dinner and opportunities to get closer to some of the animals, all packaged into an experience that promised considerably more than somewhere to put our heads down. We had not left Condobolin intending to sleep at a zoo, but the more we considered it, the less reason there seemed to be for driving past.
Robyn and I had both been Cub Scout leaders, so the prospect of sleeping in a tent was hardly venturing into unfamiliar territory. We had experience of canvas accommodation and of fitting a number of small people into it, along with their bedding, belongings and an apparently unlimited capacity to remain awake. A tent containing only our own family sounded positively restful.
Then we saw the tents. Whatever relationship these structures had with the ones we used on Cub weekends was largely confined to the material on the outside.
The word glamping had done a fair amount of work between the camping we knew and the accommodation before us. This was a tent in which comfort had been given serious consideration, rather than something to be achieved through the strategic placement of a groundsheet. Nobody appeared to expect us to spend the night discovering which part of the earth had positioned itself beneath a hip.
I could appreciate the marketing. Offer people a night at the zoo and they might imagine sleeping bags, unfamiliar noises and a walk to the amenities; offer them the same night with a proper degree of comfort and the whole proposition changes. You could have the adventure without first having to prove you deserved it through a poor night’s sleep.
For us, the attraction went beyond the accommodation. A normal zoo visit has an ending imposed upon it, when you head towards the exit and return to wherever you are staying. Here, staying was part of the visit, and the animals would remain nearby after the ordinary business of going to the zoo was supposed to be finished.
There was something pleasingly improbable about that arrangement. We were in Dubbo, on a journey home from a family Christmas, yet we had placed ourselves among animals whose natural homes belonged to other continents. The roads outside still led to familiar Australian towns, but within the zoo there were creatures that made our own physical arrangements seem rather unimaginative.
A giraffe is a good example. I had known what a giraffe looked like for as long as I could remember, which ought to have prepared me adequately for meeting one. It turned out that recognising the outline and standing close to the animal were quite different achievements.
From a distance, the neck tends to command the discussion. It is the obvious feature, the one a child would exaggerate in a drawing to ensure nobody mistook the subject for something else. Up close, there is far more giraffe to consider, and all of it belongs to a living animal going about its business rather than a familiar picture in a book.
Our part in that business involved carrots. The giraffes’ part involved collecting them with tongues that seemed to possess considerably more reach and purpose than I had allowed for.
There is a particular pleasure in offering food to an animal and discovering precisely how it intends to take possession. With a giraffe, the tongue becomes the principal participant, reaching for the carrot and making the transfer with an efficiency that leaves the person holding it largely redundant. We were providing the supplies, but there was no doubt who understood the equipment.
Those long tongues remain one of the clearest memories of the visit. You can be told about them, watch them on television and accept that they are a useful part of being a giraffe, but none of that quite replaces having one take a carrot from you. The distance between knowing and understanding can sometimes be measured in the length of a vegetable.
There was something wonderfully direct about the encounter. The giraffe had no interest in whether we were enjoying our special family outing or getting value from the overnight package. We had carrots, and that supplied sufficient grounds for a relationship.
For Kirsten, Robyn and me, it offered the sort of shared experience that does not require much explanation afterwards. A photograph might record who stood where, but the memory includes the strange business of the tongue reaching out and the sudden appreciation of just how extraordinary the animal before you really is. We had interrupted a drive home and found ourselves contributing to a giraffe’s catering arrangements.
The hippos and rhinos occupied a different place in the memory. Where the giraffes seemed to have been designed with height as the governing ambition, these animals brought the discussion back towards the ground, with a substantial emphasis on bulk.
There is no shortage of impressive wildlife in Australia. We have animals capable of surprising, injuring or thoroughly unsettling us, and others whose very existence seems to have involved an unusual set of instructions. Even so, a hippopotamus or rhinoceros presents a scale and shape that sits well outside the creatures we expect to meet in our own surroundings.
A picture contains them quite conveniently. Stand close enough to appreciate their physical presence and the convenience disappears, because the animal occupies space in a way the picture never could. You find yourself considering the amount of creature involved, rather than simply attaching the correct name to it.
The feeding experiences helped hold our attention there. Instead of walking up, identifying the resident and moving on, we had a reason to remain while the ordinary business of eating took place. Food gave the encounters their shape, and each animal made that simple activity its own.
I would not pretend that every detail has survived with equal clarity. Some parts of a trip remain complete, while others leave a strong impression without retaining the exact order of events or every practical arrangement. The hippos and rhinos have stayed with me as unmistakable presences, animals whose sheer substance was worth stopping to consider.
The smaller cats also held their place in the day. Size inevitably draws attention at a zoo, but it would be a mistake to assume that everything worth seeing must tower above you or weigh an extraordinary amount. There was plenty to occupy us among animals that did neither.
Moving between them gave the visit room to develop. There was another enclosure to approach, another animal to watch and another opportunity to discover that familiarity with a name had not exhausted the interest of its owner. We were spending time among creatures we recognised without having much practical acquaintance with them.
The lions made that distinction rather forcefully. Their feeding was to provide the sharpest memory of the stay, although it began as an organised encounter with a guide, a fence and every apparent reason to believe the proceedings were well under control.
There were three lionesses at the fence, where the guide was feeding them pieces of meat. Nearby, the male appeared to be asleep on a rock, seemingly content to let the others deal with the activity. It was easy to take that arrangement at face value.
The fence separated us from the cats, and a guard rail kept the visitors back from the fence. These were reassuring arrangements, particularly with somebody experienced standing there explaining what we were seeing. The whole setting encouraged us to watch with interest, and perhaps to become a little too comfortable with what we were watching.
The guide told us that kangaroos sometimes wandered into the larger enclosure where the big cats were allowed to roam. They did not get out again, which gave the surroundings a rather different meaning from the one they might have held for a passing kangaroo.
That was a chilling enough observation on its own. We could appreciate the information while remaining safely on our side of the barriers, looking at the lionesses receiving their meat and the male apparently having a sleep. Then a small child broke free of his mother’s grip behind the guard rail.
All four cats moved immediately. The male who had seemed asleep was as involved as the three lionesses, and they rushed to intercept the child should he come close enough to the protective fence.
The speed of it stripped away any comfortable interpretation of the scene. There was no leisurely awakening on the rock, no gradual decision to investigate and no interval in which their interest could be mistaken for curiosity. A small person had moved, and every one of those cats had responded.
Nothing further happened, but the possibility was plain. The barriers had a purpose, and the distance between the guard rail and the fence was part of that purpose, however harmless the space might have looked a moment earlier.
Afterwards came the nervous humour. The observation was made that, should the lions ever get out, all we needed to do was stay ahead of “lunch”, meaning the small child.
There was a chuckle in it, but the kind that comes from being relieved that an incident has ended where it did. On another day, with another failure somewhere in the arrangements, there might have been nothing remotely amusing to say. The joke allowed the tension to escape without altering what we had just seen.
I have thought about that moment alongside our encounters with crocodiles in Kakadu. Familiarity breeds contempt is an old expression, but it can describe something less deliberate than deciding a dangerous animal is harmless. Sometimes we simply become accustomed to being safely near it and begin to credit the animal for the safety.
The guard rail can become an inconvenience to the view. The space beyond it appears available, and because nothing has happened to anyone standing there, stepping into it can seem a small departure from an unnecessarily cautious arrangement. What gets overlooked is that the arrangement may be one of the reasons nothing has happened.
Those lions had supplied their own explanation. The apparently sleeping male had not required a second invitation, and the lionesses had changed their attention with a speed none of us could reasonably have matched. Their familiarity with people at feeding time had not removed anything essential from being lions.
Eventually, the feeding arrangements turned in our favour. After taking such an interest in the meals of other species, we were given a sumptuous dinner of our own.
Sumptuous is not a word I would ordinarily connect with a night in a tent. Our Cub Scout experience had established rather different expectations, where feeding everybody successfully and avoiding a major washing-up dispute could count as a satisfactory evening. Here, dinner was a substantial pleasure in its own right.
It deserved its position among the four feeding experiences. Three had brought us close to the animals through their appetites, while this one allowed us to sit down together and attend to ours. The zoo had made quite a convincing case for the overnight package by ensuring that the visitors were catered for as enthusiastically as the residents.
That meal also gave the day a different ending from a normal excursion. There was no need to finish eating and face the remainder of the drive home, because our accommodation was already part of the place we had come to enjoy. We could allow the evening to belong to the visit, knowing there was still more of the experience waiting for us in the morning.
The next day, bicycles were provided as part of the package, giving us another way to explore the zoo. Having already been fed and accommodated considerably better than our old Cub Scout credentials had led us to expect, we were now being supplied with transport as well. The overnight stay was proving to have rather more in it than a comfortable tent and a good dinner.
We rode for as long as we reasonably could, enjoying the freedom to move between the animals and stop wherever something held our attention. A bicycle offered a pleasing compromise between walking everywhere and retreating to the car. There was enough effort involved to feel we were participating in the outing, without every stretch between enclosures becoming a major undertaking.
The difficulty was deciding when we had done enough. There was always a reason to linger, another animal worth watching or another part of the zoo tempting us to keep the pedals turning. Leaving required a decision that staying did not, and none of us had come there for the pleasure of making an early departure.
Somewhere beyond the enjoyment, however, sat the long drive home. Dubbo had broken the journey very nicely, but it had not shortened the remaining kilometres, and I needed to preserve enough energy to deal with them. There was little sense in having such a good time on the bicycles that the drive became an exercise in regretting the last hour of it.
It was an awkward balance to strike, because tiredness acquired while enjoying yourself does not always announce its arrival as clearly as tiredness acquired doing something you would rather avoid. The next stop could seem entirely reasonable, followed by one more after that. Eventually, we had to accept that the best time to finish was while we were still enjoying it and still had something left for the road.
We had stopped in Dubbo to make the journey home more than a journey home, and the zoo had certainly obliged. Returning the bicycles brought that interruption towards its end, although getting back into the car now felt rather less appealing than it had before we discovered how much there was to do outside it.
I thought again about how little planning had brought us there. A Christmas trip to Condobolin had become a New Year’s night at the zoo because we had looked for something special to do on the way home, found it surprisingly affordable and decided to give it a go. The tents alone had exceeded our expectations before the giraffes began accepting carrots.
There would still be a drive home. For that night, though, the three of us were staying among animals we would never expect to find beyond the canvas of an ordinary Australian camping trip, with dinner comfortably attended to and no Cub Scouts requiring supervision.
The male lion could have his rock. Our interpretation of sleeping under canvas had improved considerably, and I was quite content to leave his accommodation to him.
Author
