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Published: April 19th 2010
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Canberra and Wagga Wagga - 4th to 6th April 2010
The first night back on the road was spent in Goulburn roughly half way between Sydney and Canberra. The town was nice although seemed a little quiet (though we had just left a city). It had a lovely old courthouse dating back to the early 1800’s and also the un-missable big Merino sheep statue standing at a colossal 15.2 metres high and weighing in at 97 tonnes. Why such a big sheep statue in a town I hear you ask? I believe it is much to do with the town being famous for its Merino sheep wool. That evening we slept in a cabin at a holiday park which can simply be described as dated! The cabin looked like it had been lifted straight out of the 70’s with its faux wood interior and eccentric curtain patterns. Still at $46 it was cheap, and better still it wasn’t a dorm, and with a spot of wine and bit of food we slept a dream.
Early to rise next morning we were soon back in the car heading towards Canberra where just over an hour later we were diving down
Federal Highway, through the capital, heading to Parliament House. We were able to park the car in the car park directly under Parliament House, which we both quickly commented there would be no way in the UK that Joe public would get away with parking their car under parliment. With car parked we set out to explore the capital, starting with Parliament House itself. The new parliament house was built in 1988; it is built in the hillside and covered by grass to preserve the original landscape of the site. On top of it is a huge 81 metre, 4-legged flag pole. As soon as you walk in the main door you are greeted by a forest of marble columns (which are supposed to symbolise eucalyptus trees, but we however thought it just looked rather cluttered, but the staircases were very nice. We wandered round the rest of the grand rooms, all of which were quite impressive.
Once finished at Parliament House we set out to explore the rest of the capital on foot, and I’ll give a brief synopsis of our walk here. Our first site was the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, it was sad to see the impacts
that western society had had on driving the aboriginals from their land. Next was the National Library, another impressive, large building and then onto the National Portrait Gallery. We had a look in as there was an interesting exhibition of portraits of people who had won Australian of the year over the past few decades. After some lunch we crossed the bridge to the other side of the lake. Canberra is built around the huge Lake Burley Griffin which helps to make it feel very spacious and open, but within the city centre there are only 2 bridges that allow you to get to the other side and these are very far apart which also makes for a lot of walking. Anyway, carry on walking we did, passing the National Carillion (a gift from Britain in 1963) and Blundell’s Cottage, a simple stone and clad cottage from the 1860’s left as a reminder of Canberra’s farming past. It was a beautiful hot and sunny day so we took a break, chilling out under a tree for a little while and watched a huge fountain in the lake. We were soon revived and ready to go again and completed the rest
of our walk along the river, back over the bridge, past Old Parliament House and back to the car.
We then drove to the National Museum, a very architecturally interesting building. Final stop in Canberra was the war memorial. The drive down to it, along Anzac Parade, which had different memorials from the various wars and conflicts that Australia had been involved in, culminating in the large WW1 and WW2 memorial, a beautiful building with a water feature as the centre piece and the role of honour on each side, covered in poppies that people had left there, a very good memorial and fitting tribute. The memorial concluded our day in Canberra, a very clean, spacious and political feeling city. We enjoyed our day, however it didn’t quite match up to the history and grandeur of Washington DC or London.
Back to the car and onwards with our journey to Melbourne. The evening stopover was in Wagga Wagga. Doddy’s sister Carol and brother in law Neale had some friends who lived there and Neale had spent some time living there himself, so had given us their address. We had got in touch with them and they offered for
us to stay that eve. The journey from Canberra took around 3.5 hours, passing a few dead kangaroos on the roadside (they obviously don’t look both ways!) The more that we drove the further from civilisation we got and at around 7pm we arrived at their house, a lovely rural property with 5 acres of land. That evening the sky was beautifully clear and with no external lights around the stars shone brightly. We had a really enjoyable evening with Meggo and Cath, listening to their stories about Neale’s time in Wagga and of their worldly travels, all whilst enjoying a delicious home cooked roast dinner, with local lamb. Before going to bed that eve we were told to look out for spiders and given the following advice: the grey, hairy, mean looking ones are Huntsmen and they’re OK, but if you see any Red Backs or elongated White Tails kill them as they bite and can paralyse you! So after we felt completely sure the room was spider free we were happy to go to sleep.
A spider free night was had and we lived to see another day! It was another warm one, so after a cooked
View over Canberra
Taken from Parliment House breakfast we went with Cath to see the family farm. They owned 750 acres of land and mainly farmed cows. It was great to see such an abundance of land and it showed how crowded things can be in the UK. We then said our goodbyes and set off on the remainder of our journey to Melbourne stopping for lunch in a little town called Glenrowan where Ned Kelly’s bush ranging exploits came to a bloody end in 1980.
The rest of the journey went through some nice scenery and remote places. One thing I had to remember when visiting a public toilet in one such remote place was not to sit on the loo seat as it’s quite common for people to be bitten by a hiding spider under the toilet seat. At about 5pm we arrived in Melbourne and were soon back in the city way of life. After navigating through a few one way streets and dodging some trams we were finally parked up at our accommodation, the YHA City Metro.
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