Canberra, ACT

Canberra
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After a long drive from Shepparton in temperatures averaging around 40 degrees we arrived into Canberra, the capital of Australia. I've now been in every state in Oz apart from South Australia - although I've heard there's not much there, serial killers aside (i joke!!).

As we have only one day in Canberra we decided to do the Explorer Bus which brings you around the city to take in the sights for $25. The tour began at 11am and finished at 4.45pm so it began and ended at a nice time. Canberra, for anyone who doesn't know, was created to sort out the big dispute of which city should be Australia's capital. Melbourne & Sydney both thought they should be, for their own positive reasons, but after WWI, it was decided to create a capital somewhere in between them. Canberra was born, and it's easy to see that it has been designed from the beginning. It's very clean also. Alot, if not all, of Australia's National buildings are here - Parliament, National Museums etc. Our first stop on the tour was the War Museum which is described as the best in the world. We visited quite alot of war museums in Asia so it was nothing new for us but I have to say it was still very impressive and massive. Afterwards, we were shown a street which contained war memorial statues. Parliament was next and what a building it is. Also, internationally designed, it cost just over 1 billion Aussie dollars. It has 4500 rooms, 24km of corridors, the house of representitives, senate and over 2700 clocks :o) You can catch a lift to the roof and walk on top of it and check out the massive flag (which is the size of the side of a double decker bus). Our last stop was the National Museum of Australia, another impressive building, and worth checking out. All of the places on the tour were free which was brilliant (and surprising). There was also alot of things to read & see so we could have spent much longer in each of them. It was one of the reasons we decided to do the Explorer Bus - it's a tight schedule but it means you get to enjoy all the sights in one day.

Canberra
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That night, seeing as we only had one night to see what Canberra had to offer, we partied hard. Too hard. We got home around 6am, our last memories of myself & Kev sitting on a street-kerb ringing friends from home and just laughing at them. Check-out was 10am. Make that 11.15am :o) The journey to Sydney was a beautiful experience going through waves of hungoverness :o)