Canberra

Canberra,

We arrived in Albury at The Garden Court Motel, a little later than we expected but were greeted enthusiastically by very nice proprietors Rob & Sharon Wellington, who were wondering if we were still coming. Nothing was too much trouble, they had great Wi-Fi and recommended a nice English Pub for dinner, The Bended Elbow. Jim had the special, a beef pie with salad & fries with a pint of his choice for twelve dollars. I made up for it by not having the special. The food was very good and we had a nice comfortable night at the motel before bidding our goodbyes in the morning and completing our journey to Canberra.

Having said goodbye to Ned Kelly we travelled onward stopping for lunch at the small but famous town of Gundagai. With a name like that you would have to be famous. Here we indulged in coffee and delicious egg and bacon sandwiches, which meant more fighting with shorts. Those shorts shrink every time you wash them it seems.

In the 1852 flood the whole town of Gundagai was washed away and rebuilt in its present location. From the lookout above the town you can see three bridges, The Prince Alfred Bridge, named after Queen Victoria’s son, completed in 1867, The Railway Viaduct Bridge opened in 1903 and the Sheehan Bridge opened in 1997. Each one of the bridges is enormous in length and essentially spans the flood plain.

Leaving Gundagai behind we travelled through some amazing countryside with lakes and rivers of crystal clear blue water. Kozsciuszko National Park and the Snowy Mountain Highway beckoned us. We drove higher and higher and higher on very windy roads through the Australian Alps referred to by the first peoples as Places where Spirits Dance and how very appropriate. The snowy mountains are incredible, even with not a flake of snow to be seen anywhere. Evidence of a major bush fire several years ago came into view. Miles upon miles of ghost trees were standing like monuments to their former glory. Their trunks still, white, proudly erect with an eerie sounding breeze blowing through them like a requiem mass. After paying homage to the trees that died and marveling at the resilience of the forest to regenerate itself we left to continue our journey to Canberra.

We stopped briefly for an ice cream in Cooma, but luckily for the waistline the shop was closed, so we admired these incredible mosaics and forged on yet again.

We arrived at our hotel “The Ibis Styles” which was quite hard to find as it had undergone three changes of name since our original booking. Anyway, we checked in to a very comfortable room and went for a nice walk.

The next day we checked out the new Costco at Canberra Airport, which was easy to navigate, as it was the same configuration as those in North America. I had to get some new T-shirts as the ones I brought with me were fast biting the dust after three months constant wear. Would you believe they were Segments made in Canada, but twice the price.

From there we headed to the City and first of all the New Parliament Building which we arrived just in time for the free tour. It is a beautiful building and the tour was very informative. We had coffee on the terrace and then toodled off to the Old Parliament Building, which is now a Museum. We went through the beautiful Parliament gardens and then on to the War Memorial, which was incredible. The Wall of Names decorated with poppies was a sight to behold.

We also visited the Australia/America Memorial.

Before we left Canberra we took a brief trip to the downtown which was undergoing a lot of renovations for their Centennial celebrations this year. We did find some very interesting sculptures that were somewhat amusing.

We left downtown and stopped at a very interesting Vietnamese restaurant, in Griffith, where most of the ministers of both houses of Parliament eat regularly and had a very nice meal.

We had an early night to enable an early start to drive to Sussex Inlet to visit our friends Vince and Sue after not seeing them for thirty + years………………. So exciting!