I woke to the sound of extremely heavy rain outside the motel room, and later the morning news said it would be the wettest day of the year so far.

So naturally we headed to Dubbo Zoo 🙂

As it turns out, aside from the torrential rain and regional flooding, this was a great day to see animals! As we would learn on the safari bus, the animals enjoy the rain and are more active. This was not a day when the animals just lazed around in the shade!

Dubbo Zoo is large and spread out and visitors drive around in either rented carts or their own cars. We saw one group wearing ponchos and using the rented cart and it would have been miserable! While most animals can be viewed from the car, you get a better look outside so we had to park and brave the rain frequently.

The above snap was taken on a safari bus ride where we got very close to many animals including giraffes, rhinos and a few types of antelope. This was a couple of hours into our visit, and by this point despite umbrellas our shoes and pants were sodden.

There was water everywhere, and some of the paths were flooded, and it was remarkable how unbothered the animals were by the heavy rain. And this even included animals out of the enclosures, by which I mean these guys:

Look closely at the middle one: she’s got a baby!

Look how raggedy this wet beast is! As wondrous as all the other animals in the zoo were, these uninvited guests were my favorites. One zoo employee told me they come and go and even get into (and out of) the animal enclosures!

The zoo was great. Yes it was comically wet, but we saw lots of active animals and since there were very few other guests today we didn’t have to deal with crowds of other visitors 🙂

As a bonus, here’s a photo taken from the car this morning of another pack of roos hopping alongside the road: