Canberra to Lake's Entrance

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On the 3rd, the day after the thunderstorm, we finally got to explore Canberra and all it's sites. The interesting thing about Canberra is the fact that the city has been totally planned out since its inception. When the Commonwealth of Australia came about, Sydney and Melbourne fought over where the capital would be. Neither city wanted to see the other as the capital, so the compromise was creating a capital of Canberra. An international competetion was held and an American design won... and Canberra was born. Although the the area around Canberra is quite beautiful (rolling hills, etc), Canberra has a noticably artificial feeling to it.

We took tours at the new Parliament House, the Old Parliament House and also explored the Australian War Memorial (where their unknown soldier lays) and the Australian Museum (focuses on the history of Australia, etc). All those places were worth the look, but I wouldn't recommend taking tours there, take the self-guided tours... (the tours are normally conducted by former 'pubes' i.e. public servants and are extremely boring and humourless). Jennifer was right!

After visiting the War Memorial we booked it down back to the coast to Merimbula. The trip took about 3 hours through very windy roads. Accomodation at Merimbula was great and a the hostel managers were very helpful.

The next day we finally made it into the state of Victoria. On the way to Lake's Entrance we took another coastal drive and found a carpark with a 20 min walk to Ocean's Beach. Since we really wanted to lay on a beach and read a book for a while, we took the walk. It was a neat little walk. A dune seperates Snowy River from the Ocean. Behind the dune there are marshs, bridges, etc and it was quite calm. Over the dunes we found no foot prints on the beach, which we thought was pretty neat. However, we soon discovered this was so because it was so windy, our prints were being blown away within about 10 minutes. Sand was painfully blowing on our legs and you could taste the sea salt in your mouth, so it wasn't the kind of beach to lounge about on, but it was a beautiful beach! It stretched on forever.

Once we got to Lake's Entrance and settled down at the hostel we visited the beginning of 90 Mile Beach. Once again a postcard perfect beach to walk along. After watching the sunset we made it back to the hostel to eat our dinner. We had bought a full chicken, tomatoes, buns, cheese and pasta salad at a supermarket all for $12. So good! We've taken the habit of making our dinner at night at hostels because it's much cheaper than spending $10-14 each for a good dinner at a cafe.

Pam

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Photos

Parliament Building
A picture taken from the Australian War Memorial looking towards the Parliament Building

War Memorial
Where the unknown soldier's ashes lay.

House of Representatives
Where the politicians play... the room is meant to resemble a eucalypt forest. hm.

War Plane
@ the War Memorial, inside a World War II exhibit. Mike like's Planes... a lot.