On 27th we headed south from Melbourne and ended up at the Wilson's Promontary National Park; the most southerly point on the AUstralian mainland. After scaring myself to death driving past a very well concealed police car, we headed down to one of the many beautiful beaches on the peninsula. The interestingly named Whisky Bay was simply stunning, and we had fun in the sea. Although we did not see a huge amount more, we could thell that this national park was one of the best we'd been to.
We then headed east along the coast, and ended up at a campsite on the Ninety Mile Beach, which (you guessed it) was a really long beach. The downside to camping here was that we were at the mercy of the relentless mosquitoes!
The following day we continued along the coast, and stopped at Lakes Entrance. We had a fantastic view of the harbour, and there were dozens of boats crusing up and down in the turquoise waters. After Thomas got in touch with his German heritage (:P) we headed on to the Buchan Caves. These caves were beautiful, however most of them were was too small for someone of my stature! I kept bumping my head on the ceiling, whilst Thomas and Ines (both midgets!) comfortably walked through with no problems.We then left the coastal route and went inland in the direction of Canberra. At the Victoria-New South Wales border, a drunken middle aged man took our picture, before telling us that he and his friends not only had a dead fox in the back of their car, but that they had put it on roller blades, dressed it in pink sunglasses and pulled it around Canberra! We stopped for the night at a campsite just outside of the Australian Capital Territory.
On 29th we headed to Canberra, the capital of Australia. Canberra was interesting and worth the visit, but compared to most of what I'd already seen of Australia, it wasn't great. Being a purpose built city, the layout was planned to the finest detail. Whereas Melbourne and Adelaide lacked roundabouts, Canberra had way too many, which made for some confusing driving. Everything was made from concrete, mainly 1940s-70s style, and most of the buildings were boring and unimpressive. However, the Australian Parliament was very interesting. The free tour took us around the impressive building (only 20 years old), and our guide explained the architect's "vision" and let us into some of the building's secrets. For the first time ever, my Lonely Planet let us down. Its walking tour of the city led us on roads which didn't have any pavements! We got a photo of ourselves at the Canadian embassy for Alexis and Tina, and passed by the National Concrete Centre, the Museum of Concrete, and Lake Burley Griffin, which had liquid concrete, not water, flowingthrough it.
The following day we headed north towards Sydney. We decided to quickly have a look at the Australian War Memorial before leaving Canberra. We ended up staying there for about four hours! The memorial museum had to be one of the best war museums I'd ever seen. You could've easily spent a couple of days immersing yourself in the excellent exhibits. After a look at the boring city centre, we drove straight to Sydney, Australia's largest city.
After the usual getting lost, we found Thomas and Ines's uni friend Simon who led us to his house west of the city centre. It was huge, with a swimming pool (!) amongst other things. That evening the four of us headed to the city, stopping first at Circular Quay.
Simon led us round the quay, and there stood the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in all their glory. Words can't really describe the awesomeness of these two structures. Like Uluru, I'd seen plenty of pictures of them before, but none of them came close to seeing the bridge and opera house with the naked eye!
See my Facebook photo album which corresponds to this entry:
Adelaide to Cape Trib 3: Melbourne to Sydney
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