Canberra

The Australian Capital Territory was a nice change of scenery and Canberra is a good place to visit as a tourist as it has lots of museums and attractions (and loads of them are free)!

We had three full days there and we got mixed weather, but made the most of it. On Friday we headed to the National Museum of Australia. It has four galleries and we covered the nature, settlers and aboriginal ones and our parking ran out before we could do the last one!

- Matthew in a diving helmet at the museum. Because quote "when you see a diving helmet, you can't not put it on".

- Sophie with a statue of the queen at the museum. Because quote "when you see a statue of the queen, you can't not get a photograph with it".

After a quick Macca’s (McDonalds in Australian) we went up the hill to Parliament House. We got an entertaining free tour of the Australian seat of power given by a good natured Dane and learned all about the Australian system of government.

- Parliament House.

- House of Representatives.

The next day we decided to do some climbing as the weather was good. After an hour walk we came across the well named ‘Red Rocks’ and managed to stay dry on the river crossing. The rock was quite slippery and all the holds were in horrible places! Fortunately we got chatting to a couple of locals who wondered why we’d chosen to go there and said we’d have much better luck at the Blueys (Blue Mountains, Sophie felt uncomfortable shortening the name as she felt like she didn’t know them well enough... The mountains that is). The trip wasn’t a waste though, we got a couple of climbs in and then we saw a group of six kangaroos on the way back!

- Red Rocks. The white stuff on the rock is peregrine falcon poo (they nest here in the Spring) ...makes for a slippery hand hold when climbing!

On our final morning we hit a local church and met some lovely folk (and got the recommendation to head the back way to the Blueys) before hitting a local climbing gym as it was pouring down. The gym was a really nice facility, with really good problems and gave us some hope that there are places as good as our old local, Boulderworld.

- BlocHaus climbing gym.

Nature Watch

We saw six kangaroos, almost certain they were Eastern Greys, the most commonly seen as they live on the grasslands near most of the population. Red kangaroos are what most people know, but they live in the outback.

We also saw a biggish spider, exciting!

And we heard loud and clear the absolute freaking racket that the blooming cockatoos made every morning at 6 o’clock! And no I don’t have a photo because they’re not worth it. Nature Sounds?!