Although we were told otherwise, there is actually a lot to do in Australia's capital city.

We only had one day here-so had a lot to do. We started in Australia national Museum. Before we'd even got in the door some guide told us where we could get free coffee and biscuits when we had finished looking around-we must have looked like we needed it! The displays were interesting; with views on modern day Australia right back to when it was first settled by the white man, with some great black and white pictures taken of the Aboriginal people by the first explores. There were also displays on some guy who had cycled accross the whole of the country(crazy) and information on how Australia became a cafe culture-all thanks to the Greek immigrants that came over in the 40's onwards.

After the museum we went to the New Parliment building, on Capital Hill (sounds familiar?)

This was built to replace the old parliment building simply due to space reasons. The first parliments in the country were shared between Melbourne and Sydney but as they kept fighting over which city was better-they decided to make a new city where parliment could be held. They chose Canberra (meaning meeting place in Aboriginee) to be this place. They have taken British and American set ups to make thier parliment-having a house of representatives and the senate. The building itself is beautiful, costing over 2 billion to build. The views from the roof are lovely, and there is grass layed on top-so that it is said the normal people can stamp on the polititians below them!

After this we were planning another night in the YHA hostel car park-but I ran into some nice firemen. I was wondering around the mall and they tried to sell me a calendar they were selling to raise money for some burns unit they were affiliated with. I explained that I would, but I didn't have a house to put it in right now. This led to me explaining that we were travelling in a van around Oz. It turned out that they were travelling down from a town near Sydney, and they had a spare room which we could use! As dodgy as it sounded, I took thier card (so I could google it later) I said we would think about it. A Couple of hours later we were sitting in a lovely appartment, TV, shower, washing machine-it was bliss! In the morning we got breakfast cooked for us...they even gave us some free firemen merchandise! So if you are in need of a new calendar for 2009 go to firefighters.com.au ( I think)...well worth a look!