CANBERRA

Jerome writes:

After a fabulous week together, we sadly said goodbye to the Westlakes last Sunday and we decided to stay a few more nights in the cabin, before pushing on to Canberra. On Monday, we went up Mt Hotham. The snow was falling thickly and at one point, the strong wind was driving the snow in all directions. That was the closet we came to a blizzard! We spent the day tobogganing at Dinner Plain and it snowed heavily at one stage which was great, then not long after the sun came out! We all enjoyed hot chocolates before leaving the snow that day.

On Tuesday, we left Porepunka and we headed to Canberra. We spent one night at Albury again, before arriving in Canberra on Wednesday. It was raining and soggy when we arrived at Canberra and it was cold! On Thursday, we went to the Australian Electoral Commission at the old Parliament House and we learned about the history of democracy in Australia and the voting process. We even did a mock-up of an election, with Peach, Apple, Orange and Banana as the candidates!

We went on a tour of Parliament house, which I enjoyed. We got to see the House of Representatives and Senate. I learned that between the five buildings of Parliament house, there is 8,000 rooms, 21km of hall and about 2,000 clocks, all of which read exactly the same time! All the clocks have a red and green light on them - when the green light comes on the parliamentarians have four minutes to get to their seat in the House to vote on bills that are put forth. If they don't get there, they are locked out!

On Friday, we went to the Australia War Memorial. We went a tour of the memorial and were amazed at the hardships that our soldiers faced, particularly those brave men that fought at Gallipoli, lest we forget. There was so much to see there and many detailed and interesting displays, much symbolism and imagery that allowed the viewer to be able to picture how difficult the circumstances were. We hope to go back and learn some more at the memorial this week.

Today, we went to the Cockington Green miniature village. It was amazing to see the attention to detail that the modelers used when constructing the little people and buildings. There was an English village, with a cricket match, wedding and a soccer game. The other half of the gardens was an international section, that featured buildings from many countries. I enjoyed the G-scale train that you could operate yourself! We went for a ride on a miniature steam train and saw an exquisite 34-room dolls house. It had tiny toys that the doll-children played with and tea table with tiny cakes and teapot.

Canberra is a great place with a lot to see and do. We caught up with friends this afternoon which was really nice (the locals always have good tips for what to do around the place) and we are bracing ourselves for more cold weather this week.