Capital Territory

As soon as you get to Canberra you realise what everyone was talking about when we were advised, "You'll need a map!". We got lost immediately and it's a very easy thing to do. Canberra was chosen as the capital because deciding between Sydney and Melbourne could cause serious friction. Canberra is somewhere in between. It's surrounded by hills in large flat area seemingly in the middle of no-where.
The design of the new capital was put up as a competition and received various entries. The winning design was odd to say the least. It's looks good on a map but to navigate it's just frustrating and it also means that there are no main areas where people seem to congregate. The whole place is shaped on a couple of giant circles and one way systems. Often you can see where you want to go but getting to it is tricky. Endless circling becomes even harder when on foot. Pavements are an afterthought in Oz.
However, Canberra is still quite nice place. It's covered in trees and fairly pleasant to walk around parts of it but having a car seems fairly essential. This is the home of the Australian government and we went for a look round. A nice building that you can see from a long way off. It's built on Capital Hill, yet another nod towards America. A grand building inside with loads of marble. Information on the way the Australian government works is also inside, very similar to the American Government. Shocker! Also interesting was the fact that it took many many years before Aborigines could vote, and even now there are no Aborigines in Parliament so it may seem there are none that get the opportunity to run for election but I could be wrong.
Parliament was not in session that day but normally you can watch from viewing galleries if you wish.
Canberra is also home to the National Museum. What a great museum it is too. A crackingly modern and quirky building from all angles. It also has oodles of information about Australia and it's history aswell as modern times. A definite must-see of Canberra.
Some nice looking buildings and tree lined avenues make up this disjointed place. The majority of people living here are civil servants but there are things for visitors, mainly revolving around museums and art galleries. The place seem fairly quiet otherwise. We did get into an art gallery which varied between totally dire and pretty ok.
A major problem for us is that it was really cold at night. After staying in a lay-by freezing to death we decided to splash out on a cabin in a caravan park. I say cabin, I actually mean a knackered old caravan from the 60´s with styling straight out of a horror movie. It was warm though, with both heaters on full whack. It was a shame we tripped the fuse though. We soon found out how to get the electric back on, by ringing the half asleep park caretaker, so all was fine.
We were told the view from Canberra's communications tower was really good so we paid our money and went up. Yep, loads of trees pretty much. Not a lot else you can really see other than the distant mountains, not bad but not great.
A day or two is well enough, lets get to Sydney!