ACT and across to Adelaide

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We managed to be in 4 states over the next 6 days which was pretty cool - New South Wales, ACT (Australian Capital Territory), Victoria and South Australia!

We liked Canberra much more than we expected. It was chosen as the site of the nation's capital in 1908 as a compromise between Melbourne and Sydney. It was designed by an American - Walter Burley Griffin and, because of the two World Wars and the Great Depression took a long time to build. It is laid out in a wheel and spoke design and a lot of thought was given to making it look nice, including a large lake and making full use of the natural landscape. There was very little traffic, it was clean and the architecture was interesting. First stop was the National Museum which was very modern, stylised with soft lighting and slightly strange exhibits! However, we later found the Pioneer area which was much more interesting - clothes, convict love tokens and even a Rolf Harris section (not too sure what he was a pioneer of - the wobbleboard?!) There was also a piece of ballast and a cannon from Captain Cook’s ship, the Endeavour. We later drove up Mount Black to look at the amazing views of the city.

Next morning, we were up early to take the car in to have the wheels re-aligned (oh the joys of travelling in your own vehicle!) After treating ourselves to a luxury breakfast we visited the New Parliament House - a very impressive building, half set into the hill and with grass on the roof. It was also quite pretty inside with lots of wood inlays, tapestries, paintings and gifts from around the world including Queen Victoria’s writing desk on which she signed the act that gave Australia its independence. Even the kids were really interested. The Senate and House of Representatives are painted red and green after the UK Houses of Parliament. In the afternoon we let Bella choose our trip and she decided on Cockington Green, a miniature village based on one in Devon, very quaint with English country houses and village cricket scenes. There was also an international display so we could play “spot the places we’ve been to” - depressingly few as it turned out, have to plan another world trip soon!!

We left Canberra the next day and headed into the Snowy Mountains (Victoria) which had no snow on them and were not really even that mountainous, but were very pretty - more like the Brecon Beacons or the Scottish Highlands, and reasonably high at approx 1,500m. Camped at a lovely site in Tumut but it started to rain and got very heavy before we decided to put the fly on, so got very wet and muddy. A cute tree frog sheltered in our tent though and we also befriended a tame possum so that made up for it.

Thursday 11th Feb was rather depressing however as we realised we were now half way through our trip - boo! Also it was hard to pack the tent away as it was so wet. Drove through Wagga Wagga and into a fruit fly quarantine zone at which we had to stuff about 6 peaches each and then bin the rest of the fruit that I’d bought that morning! The next day we had a fairly easy drive to a place called Mildura, a nice town with some pretty, old colonial style buildings and palm lined streets. We didn’t see much of it though as we were staying with some people (Cindy & David) on the other side and were keen to find their house. Dinner that night was with John & Irene Krul who are the parents of a guy called Nick in our meeting at home.

Saturday, we finally left after more chatting and drove through flat, wheat growing Victorian countryside to get to South Australia which seemed greener and more undulating (although the greenness didn’t last long!) We stopped at Monash Adventure Park for lunch and arrived at Kenton and Seleah’s house at 6pm, having gone back ½ hour (strange SA time difference rule!)

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