Canberra and aroundabout

Our stay in Canberra has been wonderful! Our cousins Debbie and Brett kindly let us housesit while they were in Perth, so we had a base to see the region and our Capital. What a lovely city, and the attractions were fantastic. We have spent a week or so here and know that we want to come back some day. There are so many things here that make us proud to be Australian, and such interesting museums and venues that one could spend weeks looking at them. Parliament house was a real eye opener, and we were able to wander around completely freely to see the many famous places, the Houses of Senate and Representatives, and the valuable exhibits. Looking down the Anzac Parade to the War memorial from the heights of the roof of Parliament house is breathtaking and made us feel very proud. The flag pole is 20 stories high (80mtrs) and flag the size of a double decker bus. The War Memorial is amazing, and of course there are all the “National” things like Museums, Art Galleries, Library, Archives etc all set in park like surroundings with wonderful buildings. Highly recommended. All this is surrounded by hills and mountains and is so scenic.
We took this opportunity to visit the south coast of NSW to visit some old South African friends of ours. We drove through Bega to Merimbula and stayed in a little beach side community of Tura beach. It was SO like the South African Cape region with its high hills surrounding the bays, huge rivers flowing into the sea via lagoons and lots of forest. Made us quite homesick for the old country, and we were so impressed that we would have sold up and moved there if we had not been so imbedded in WA. After our visit, where we celebrated New Year with our friends, we drove up through many seaside resorts, each prettier than the last, to Batemans Bay. The only trouble with travelling in such a lovely area on New Year’s Day is that the whole of Sydney seemed to be there on the beaches and lagoons..it was SO crowded! Not a parking or spot to be had. We selfishly wished that the school holidays would be over so we could have the place to ourselves again! This is one area we are going to return to on our “next” time around!
Back to Canberra for a few days of catch up, painting and cricket. We are now going to take the opportunity to visit Sydney and leave our caravan in Canberra (only 3 hours drive on Freeway). With the school hols we fear that caravan parks will be chockers and expensive, so this is a chance to see the Big Smoke without the van. We will stay with relatives for a few days and then return to Canberra to resume the big circuit.
Due to repeated requests we will write a “inside story” segment on the Blog for those, like Chris, who are interested. But there is not much time when we are having fun...next time!