Day 15 Tuesday 10th Dubbo, Culture and Caves

The weather was much improved on yesterday’s weather so in the morning, we headed out to visit Western Plains Cultural Centre. It was described as Dubbo’s creative soul and home to the region’s galleries and museum and we would have to agree. We enjoyed visiting different galleries and our favourites were the “Waste to Art” gallery where the displays were made from waste. Categories ranged from pre-schools, primary schools, high schools and adults. Some of the pieces of work were very clever. One of my favourites was a kangaroo made mainly from brown Woolworths shopping bags but I think the children may have had a fair bit of adult help! Another gallery we enjoyed was the “Best of the Bald Archy Prize” a send-up of the Archibald prize and many of the paintings were very humorous. I also enjoyed the excellent museum display with a special feature called “From the Vault”, “A Woman’s Place”. We decided to have a coffee at the café located inside the centre, with outside seating as well. It was very busy when we walked in and was obviously the meeting place for coffee for groups of people from many demographics. Mums with babies, retired groups, families on holidays etc. etc. The café was packed for nearly the entire time we were there. In the afternoon we had booked a tour of the Cathedral Cave out at the Wellington Caves, approximately a 50 min. drive from Dubbo. We had tried to do a cave tour last year but were told on the day we were there that tours were not operating due to the rain. Well we just thought it was because it was wet, rainy day but today we found out that the floods earlier in 2023 had flooded the cave and that new infrastructure had to be built and tours had only re-opened 7 months ago. The caves are “dry” caves and are famous for the mega-fauna fossils that have been found in them. Our guide said that students from Flinders Uni were working in some of the caves on an archaeological dig. We thoroughly enjoyed this tour. Being school holidays here, Rob and I were by far the oldest people on the tour but we were fine. We were very impressed with the behaviour of all the children with their parents, on the tour with us. There were probably about 12 or so ranging from about 12ish down to little babies being carried in slings.