. We eventually chose to do the scenic coastal drive as we weren't in a hurry particularly. Neither of us had driven further south of Sydney than the Royal National Park. So once we drove through the first few coastal towns and followed the coastline there was no stopping us.
Past
Wollongong and
Kiama on to
Jervis Bay. Stopping along the way for a photo or two and driving on again. In Kiama we stopped for a home-made lunch near the
Big Blowhole. The big Blowhole is quite a sight as it is BIG. And on we went to
Jervis Bay via a small unintended detour
(Jervis Bay Territory). We stopped in a small town called Huskisson where you can go for dolphin watching and/or whale watching which we might do when it's whale watching season again and enjoy its bright white beaches.
And then on inland to
Canberra. Driving this route to Canberra took us twice the time (6hrs) than it would have taken us via the inland route. Needless to say by the time we got to Canberra and freshened up it was dinner time.
Old and New Parliament Building
('Everything' in the old parliament building was left the way when they moved over to the new a real time capsule.)Friday the weather was wonderful, somewhere in the high twenties, and we thought it would be a good idea to see all the attractions of Canberra on foot to get a good feel of the place. From the hotel we went straight for the
Parliament House, the
Old Parliament House,
National Portrait Gallery, the
Aboriginal Embassy followed by the
National Gallery of Australia and across the bridge over
Lake Burley Griffin on which we saw some wild
black swans, to the
National Carillon and along the shores of the lake and up
Anzac Parade to the
Australian War Memorial and back via
Captain Cook Memorial Jet (147m high) and home again.
Left to right: Black swan, National Carillon, Parliament House, Old Parliament House, House of Representatives, Old House of Representatives, Australian War Memorial, Bagpiper at Australian War Memorial, Captain Cook Memorial Jet, Aboriginal Embassy.
It was a busy day and a whole lot more walking then we had initially anticipated. We were looking forward to a nice refreshing bath in the hotel, except our room didn't have one.
There is a lesson in there for me. On Saturday we were going bush. In the 9 months that we have been here so far we have not seen one wild kangaroo so that became our mission for the day. But before we headed out for a few walks in
Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve we stopped at the
Mount Stromlo Observatory. Although it was closed (until mid 2008) it was still nice to see the domes that house the telescopes. Not deterred by its closure, we went on after a brief stop at
Casuarina Sands Waterhole with its many Gippsland Water Dragons and a few wombat burrows, to the
Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. Here they have huge antennae or satellite dishes. The biggest (
72m across) was listening in on
Voyager II at that moment. Just for the occasion I wore my Greenwich Royal Observatory t-shirt and walked around as an Uber-Geek, just to be funny. From there we went to
Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Here we finally saw kangaroos roaming free in their natural habitat and also quite a few emus.
In Tidbinbilla there is also a very large koala enclosure where you can walk through and walk either the 20 minute loop or the 45 minute loop. We thought having the best chance of seeing one was by doing the 45 minute loop. After a little more than an hour looking at every tree we were back at the start without having seen one. Okay, not being outsmarted by some koalas we went for the 20 minute walk. 30 minutes in we still hadn't seen one. Disgruntled we left. But the rest of the park was wonderful. Later on there was a
platypus spotting tour with one of the rangers we went on. But probably because of the large number of people present none showed.
Platypus, Tasmania 2004By the time we finally set home it was around 18.30 and we learnt that the local snakes came out to play. Because not soon after we saw one - an
Eastern Brown Snake (1m) warming itself up in the middle of the road. Of course we stopped the car and I immediately jumped out to have a closer look. Brown Snakes are not aggressive (but very poisonous) unless threatened and normally shy away when approached. This was also the case with this one. As soon as it was in the grass and by the leaf litter it literally disappeared in front of my eyes. I did have a careful look around but as soon as I realised I could not find it I slowly backed up. I didn't want to get bitten with 2 more holidays to go. Thinking that was going to be all the snake we would see on this trip to my delight there was another one around the same size only a few hundred yards away. This one was also on the road but being attacked by two
magpies and trying to get to the grass on the other side. That was about the time I reached it and as soon as it was in the grass it disappeared in it, just like the other one did in the leaf litter even before I could take one photo of it.
Sunday we went to
Namadgi National Park for a few more bush walks and to enjoy the scenery.
After a hard walk up some steep hill we thought that we had seen enough and we would try again about seeing some koalas in Tidbinballa. On the way to Tidbinballa we stopped at Gibraltar Falls and on the way out we spotted an Echidna shuffling around by the side of the road. Unfortunately once we got to Tidbinballa the koalas were still not to be seen despite looking in every tree. But I thought maybe we'll see some more snakes.... Naah, nothing but it was still a great day out.
On our last morning in Canberra we went for a tour around most of the
embassies you can find there. Some are really nice like the Embassy from Papua New Guinea built like a
traditional longhouse and it was open to visitors unlike most of the other embassies. The
Chinese Embassy was built with Chinese style roofing all around. The British Embassy was more or less a fortress but not as bad as the Israeli Embassy. And the Dutch Embassy looked awful compared to some of the other embassies who had put some of their national identity in it. It resembled a boring, built in the 70's, school building from the outside. But then maybe we, the Dutch, are supposed to think that they didn't waste any of the taxpayers money unnecessarily.
After that we went to the
Telstra Tower for a final look down on the city. This is also where the
Australian National Botanical Gardens are so we popped in there as well. As soon as you walk in you are confronted with a sign warning you there are
Brown Snakes present in the Gardens and that they are part of its ecosystem. Not thinking, but secretly hoping, we would see one we went on our way. We were surprised by the amount of
Gippsland Water Lizards we found walking around everywhere and their size as we hadn't seen them anywhere else in Canberra. It was even a bigger surprise to us that we later heard and then saw a proper size Brown Snake (black body) who was probably less then 2 feet next to us crawling over some dry leaves into a crevice in the Rock Garden. Again too quickly to take a
picture. We waited around a bit and had a look again but it would only stick out his head a little bit and as soon as it saw us it retreated. They were quite pleased that we reported the sighting for their
research project.
Brown Snake warning sign, small Gippsland Water Lizard
After that it was time to go home. We took the inland route and it was quite dull being on the motorway. Next slight right in 226 Km was when we noticed the distance we still had to go on the
Hume Highway.
The only thing that excited me so far for 15 minutes or so was the cruise control as I had never found a need to use it before. The next thing that excited me was a sign only saying
The Big Merino in
Goulburn next exit..... I had seen it on TV before
when they moved it. A huge cement/concrete structure in the shape of a
Merino sheep - a good place to stretch the legs as any other, we thought.
And we were home again in only 3 hours time from leaving the Australian Botanical Gardens.
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