Canberra to Sydney

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I was pleasantly surprised by Canberra given that it was a city built specifically to be capital of Australia to solve the dispute between Sydney and Melbourne. It didn't necessarily feel like the capital city (whereas I think Sydney did) but it was a really nice city with a big lake, lots of parks, a nice shopping mall(!) and some really good sights.

We visited the AIS (Australian Institute for Sport), where the talented sports youth of Australia are given scholarships to attend and basically train train train to be the best at what they do and win olympic gold medals!! It had a very American feel to it. There weren't many athletes there at the time given that the olympics were in full swing, but still it was quite good to visit as a British tourist given that we were kicking ass in the medal table!!

We also visited Questacon (a bigger and better version of Techniquest), the High Court, the Deep Space Centre (where they're currently tracking things like the Mars Rovers), Australian Royal Mint (where we made our own dollar coins) but forgot to ask why they don't have 1 and 2 cent coins and round everything to the nearest 5 cents (how stupid!!!), the foreign embassies (all built in their country's own architectural style), Parliament House (where we ended up doing a guided tour with a SAGA bus tour - don't ask!), the Aboriginal tent embassy, tasted lots of food at the old bus depot markets, listened to the Carillon (glorified church bells), the Australian War Memorial (which was absolutely massive and probably needed a couple of days to do it justice) and ANZAC parade.

On our way to Sydney, we stopped at Goulburn to have a look at the big Merino, basically just a big sheep and not a lot else! We camped in a place called Kangaroo valley although there were only wombats around, and lots of them! We were just about to go to sleep when the van suddenly started shaking (and squeaking!) , I was a little scared so sent Ian to investigate, and as he opened the door a (big) wombat scuttled away, it seems Helen was a good scratching post as it continued through the night!

We continued north visiting a blowhole and some old whaling sheds at Kiama and then over the sea cliff bridge, quite impressive in photos but less so when you're travelling along it.....next stop Sydney.

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Photos

Freefalling
One of the cool things at Questacon, although I was too scared to do it.

Guillotine
Another Questacon thing to scare you half to death!

Parliament House
The flag on top is the size of a double decker bus