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Canberra is a quiet city, sort of ghost townish. It was designed by Walter Burley Griffin who won a competition to design the nations capital. It is very organised and based on geometrical shapes to decentralise the city. We spent our first day just looking around the city centre and exploring the shops.
On Saturday we did a lovely walk around the lake, guided by Rachel our excellent and very informative guide. The lake is surrounded by several monuments and gifts from other nations. Such as a flag pole from Canada and six oak trees from Britain.
On Sunday we went to the old bus depot markets where there were lots of arts and craft type stalls. There were lots of things we wanted to buy but couldn't. We then went to the Botanical Gardens. These were nice gardens but we much preffered the one in Sydney. We saw some wild parrots, Sion managed to photograph the green ones, but the red ones were too quick for him!
Monday was the worst day we have had since being in Australia. It rained continuosly all day so we spent a lot of time in the van. Rachel was cold.
Tuesday was a nicer day so we walked along the ANZAC parade. This is a wide road where all the war memorials can be found. This tour was guided by Sion. He was also excellent and informative but knew slightly less than his tourist. At the top of the parade is the Australian War Memorial Museum. We spent hours looking round the museum. It covered everything from the Australians in WWI, the battle in Gallipoli, Turkey, to present day. This was a really good museum but we needed longer than a day to explore it fully.
Wednesday we spent the morning doing our washing and waiting, quite boring really. We used the time to plan our next week. In the afternoon we went to the National Museum of Australia. It was a very big museum in a very strange building. There was a lot there but it was all a bit chaotic and confusing.
On Thursday we did another self guided walk. This one started at Old Parliament House, went round to the Magna Carta memorial, to Parliament House and back again. Sion liked Parliament House best where the Australian flag was bigger than a double decker bus. After a quick lunch we drove up black mountain, but there were too many trees to get a good view. So we came back down and drove to the top of Mount Ainslie instead where the views were far better.
Friday the 11th we went to collect our post, but it still hadn't arrived. Since we were bored of Canberra we decided to go to the Snowy Mountains without our post. We will drive back up in a few days to collect it.
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