Saying 'Catch Ya Later' To Australia - Canberra, Melbourne And Sydney

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Having left the Blue Mountains (which, judging by her last blog, Helen was very pleased to do), we started the trip down south towards the state of Victoria. First though, we had a quick stop in Canberra, the capital of Australia.

Oh, wait! Before I tell you about Canberra, I haven’t updated you on my ‘list of animals I want to see before I leave Australia’ have I? Sorry about that, this is where we currently stand…

1) Koala - Seen in a tree at a caravan park
2) Cassowary - Seen at Cape Tribulation
3) Platypus - Seen in the Tablelands
4) Sea Turtle - Seen at the Great Barrier Reef
5) Kangaroo - Seen at a caravan park
6) Kookaburra - Seen all over the place
7) Possum - Seen whist eating dinner one night (as well as a couple of them in Brisbane)
8) Wombat
9) Massive Spider - Seen far too many of…
10) Snake - Seen on the side of a road

So, that leaves just one animal, the infamous little wombat. Only just over half way into the trip we’d managed to see 9 of the 10 animals, leaving just one. Surely it was only a matter of time before I got the full ten! Anyway… back to Canberra…

Canberra isn’t like most capital cities, in fact it isn’t like most cities, in the world. This is because it’s so small that it can hardly be classified as a city. Driving there and only being 10 minutes from the centre we were still surrounded by fields, with no hint of a capital city being just over the horizon. Before we knew it we were bang in the centre with only a few cars driving around with us.

We’d heard a lot of negative things about Canberra: that there’s nothing to do there, it’s boring and that really there’s no point in it (they should have just made Sydney the capital). Now sure, Canberra isn’t going to overtake Amsterdam as the top location of Hen and Stag parties (the nightlife there is probably similar to that of Great Shelford), but that’s by no means to say the city isn’t worth visiting.

I say that because it's different to most places. Rather than just sprawling out with growth, it was designed before it was built, meaning that it’s a very well laid out, has lots of interesting buildings and is a very pleasant place to spend a day. Hmmm… I’ve just typed ‘has lots of interesting buildings’. I’m getting far too old.

In the morning we went to the National Museum of Australia (yes, that’s right, it was free to get in) and afterwards we drove up to a great viewpoint overlooking the city to eat our lunch. Well, technically, we didn’t actually eat lunch at the viewpoint as, when we got out of the car, we were followed by lots of birds, interested in our sandwiches. We therefore decided it’d be safer if we ate the food in the campervan.

Yeah, I guess you could argue that a few birds aren’t exactly a good reason to eat your food in a cramped up camper van when there’s a great view and picnic benches just around the corner. You could also say that we may have been being a bit weedy by hiding away from them. Finally, you could probably point out that the birds didn’t actually do anything, aside from walk near to us. But, trust me, these birds were mean! One of them only had one eye - no doubt from where his last victim lashed out at him in the hope of saving his life. Had we not taken the precautionary actions we did, I fear I might not be typing this blog to you right now.

Despite the birds, lunch was fun. We sat in the van and mocked the little guys by waving our sandwiches at the windows, acting like we were really very brave…

Next, we went to the very good National War Museum and finally that evening we took a stroll around parliament house and made use of the free Internet in the National Library. Just before these, we got a message from Helen’s parents, saying they needed to speak to us.

No, it wasn’t a demand to write better blogs nor them telling us a good location to find wombats (though, that would have been useful!), it was a message from New Zealand. In the shape of a speeding ticket. To make matters worse they gave the location of where the speeding ticket was obtained and it was somewhere that I’d been driving….

Now, I don’t mind getting a speeding ticket, if I was doing above the speed limit then that’s fair enough, but two things were strange. Firstly, that I’d managed to get the ticket not Helen (who frequently mocks me for driving slow and who herself sometimes takes corners like a rally car driver on his last championship winning lap) and secondly that I’d got it in our Masda Famila. The same car that basically stopped when driving up hill and that seemed to be powered by a couple of drunk mice. Getting to the speed limit would have been an achievement in that thing, but managing to break it?! They should have sent me a letter of congratulations, rather than a fine!

The next day we spent in the car, carefully watching the speedometer as we drove towards Melbourne. There was a place on the way that summarised the life of Ned Kelly through animotronics - Bill Bryson has described as one of the funniest things he’d ever seen - but it was shut. So all we saw instead was a giant model of the man, who unfortunately, didn’t have a pet wombat.

Afterwards, was Melbourne, probably our favourite city we’d been to all trip. I can’t quite put my finger on why, there wasn’t too much special about it, but it was just a really pleasant place to walk about and had a much more multicultural feel than anywhere else we’d been in Australia. We only intended to spend a couple of days there, but ended up spending 4 as there was plenty to see and do. The highlight of our time was the 2 days we spent at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground). On one day we took a tour, where a very friendly elderly gentleman showed us behind the scenes; from the places the media sit to the area where the England players hang around watching their fellow team-mates quickly getting bowled out. Also included was a trip round the Australian Museum of Sport, which even Helen agreed was the best museum we’d been to all trip.

The next day we were back at the MCG, but this time we were there with another 30,000 people to watch a game of Aussie Rules Football. Those of you that don’t know the rules to this particular sport and are now hoping that I can explain all the intricacies to you aren’t in luck. As far as I can tell it’s a bit like rugby but with more kicking and more chasing of a randomly bouncing ball. I mean really, when will people learn that balls are meant to be round? The game was pretty good, fast paced and clearly required a lot of skill, but it was frequently ruined as the ball would randomly bounce around, forcing groups of butch grown men to helplessly chase after it as it disappeared through their legs and went off in various unpredictable directions.

Having spent 4 days in Melbourne we were running a little short on time to get back to Sydney. Helen and I had a bit of a disagreement. I wanted to drive down along the Great Ocean Road and then head back, but Helen wasn’t too fussed and didn’t think we had enough time. Helen (unsurprisingly) won and we started to head back. First stop was Phillip Island, where we got to see Penguins in the wild!

… Hello everyone! It’s Helen. Dave has opted to pass the blog baton to me. This is on the basis that he wrote some of my last one. Although between you and me, I think it’s because I’ve been watching ‘Paris Hilton’s New BFF’ on MTV and this way he gets to change the channel to some sport or other. BFF stands for ‘Best Friends Forever’ for those of you that were wondering. And yes, it’s RUBBISH!! Not like that other show ‘Rock of Love’…

Anyhow, enough of trashy MTV programmes. You want to hear about penguins right? No? Tough! Every night on an island South of mainland Australia lots and lots of teeny tiny blue penguins clamber from the ocean to waddle across the stretch of beach back to their waterfront homes. These penguins are the smallest in the world and stand only about a foot high. They can spend several days at a time out in the ocean feeding and often return feeling sleepy and vulnerable about crossing an open expanse of beach where they are exposed to potential predators. This means that a few of them will emerge from the water tentatively… slowly… gingerly… and then get too scared and rush back to the water! They all made it eventually (some of them bent over almost horizontally in a bid to reach the safety of the bank. It was like the end of the 100m at the Olympics.) and it’s sweet to watch.

The following day we mooched onto Wilsons Promontory National Park (which, as Google just informed me as I typed it in to check the spelling, is the most Southerly point of mainland Australia). Let me make it clear from the outset that the only reason we went there was because Dave had read in our guidebook that wombats live there. Let me also make it clear that we did not see any. And it rained. Loads. To the point where I actually paid $3 to drape myself in a plastic poncho that could have fit over a detached house. We hiked one of the trails all the same and visited some of the beaches before conceding defeat. On the plus side I got some photos of Dave in his anorak, with his hood up, looking just swell. (He’s objecting to me calling his “waterproof jacket” an anorak but methinks he forfeited his rights by giving up writing this blog). Every cloud…

On one night between then and now (not so good with dates it turns out) we stayed an awesome caravan park that had something called a “jumping pillow”. Now before we started staying in caravan parks I had no idea what a jumping pillow was. When I first heard of them I pictured a man dressed up in a pillow costume (with his face painted to match the colour of the pillow) jumping. Thankfully I was wrong. A jumping pillow is what you get when you cross a trampoline with a bouncy castle. There just aren’t the words to adequately describe how much fun it is. So I won’t try.

Over the next 4-5 days we made our way up along the coast towards Sydney. In all honesty there wasn’t that much to see or do and, after meeting several people who raved about the Great Ocean Road that Dave assures me he wasn’t paying off, I have to admit that we probably made the wrong choice in missing it. It was always going to be a win-win situation for him really - this way he gets to use it as leverage for future decisions! He may look funny in an anorak but he’s not so stupid you know.

We spent our final days of Australia in Sydney. Remember Dave mentioning a place called Kings Cross in his last blog? The one that was a bit seedy and “probably not somewhere to take your girlfriend”? Well that’s where we stayed. Hotel 59 is a bed and breakfast that only cost us £35 per night AND included the best French toast in the world ever. Better than the Swissotel no less. (And the price for French toast at the Swissotel is about the same as one night at this place.)

Back in Sydney it was time to return our beloved Agrabah to his owner. Thankfully they didn’t notice the dent that appeared after I backed it into a post several weeks before. (Yes, clever idea caravan park owner, paint the post green so it isn’t distinguishable from the leafy surrounds). During our 7-week stint with the campervan we had clocked up nearly 8000km (or around 5000 miles). That’s actually farther than driving from London to Alaska. Not bad, eh?

While in Sydney we visited the aquarium, both got much needed hair cuts and attended the Sydney Winter Festival were we drank fruit punch and ate currywurst sausages. Come to think of it, that was actually our last night there. Not very Australian is it?

I already miss Oz and can’t wait to go back. We drove the length of the East Coast yet there is still so much that we weren’t able to see this time around. My advice to you would be the same as a friend recently said of Japan: ‘If you ever get the chance to go then do and if you don't get a chance, make one.’ Ah Australia, you bloody beauty!

PS. Mum, I drive really sensibly. Dave’s the one that got the speeding ticket remember so don’t listen to him.

PPS. Dave never did see a wombat in the wild.

PPPS. (Dave again) We've ended up summarising Australia a bit as we're getting behind with the blogs (sorry!). We've therefore missed a few things out. Such as the morning we spent playing golf - see video.

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