We arrived in Canberra at about 8pm after a 3 1/2 hour bus from Sydney. Marion picked us up from the bus station and we drove home. Paul had made a tasty meal of chicken and pasta. We miss home cooking. After that we stayed up for ages drinking wine and chatting, eventually getting to bed about 3am.

The next day we didn't do too much. When we got up Marion and Paul had gone to work. We hung around the house doing a bit of the blog and watching tv. Travelling's hard work, sometimes you just need a day off! When Marion and Paul came home we had steak and chips for tea. Alan had a kangaroo steak, he thought it was pretty tasty. I tried some of it, but decided to stick to beef. It was quite nice though. After that we tried out their 70s music quiz from the 70s theme party they had had the previous weekend. Didn't do too badly! For the rest of the evening we chatted and listened to different music from our ipods. We stayed up quite late again but not as bad as the previous night.

The next day we had a nice lie in. Later on Paul took us into Canberra. We went to the war memorial museum which was really good. It has exhibits from all the wars Australia has been involved in. We stayed there for quiet a while. After that we headed over to the Australia Museum, a big crazy building a few minutes drive away. After a quick pie for lunch we did the museum, which was smaller but still interesting. We even got to reocrd our own radio announcement. After that we went and picked Marion up from the gallery and went to to the big Telstra tower on the hill. It was getting dark and there was a good view of the city all lit up. We went out on the deck and it was extremely windy, so we went back in for a nice cup of tea before going home. We saw some possums on the way. After having stew for tea we watched Withnail & I, which Alan had never seen, before bed.

On our last day in Canberra Marion took us up to Tidbinbilla, a nature resevre. It was about a 40min drive away, there was a lot of nice scenery on the drive. We also saw loads of roos on the way. We had seen quite a lot but they are still very exciting. Once we got to Tidbinbilla we saw loads more roos and emus. There are some bigg electric fences around ( I know cos I touched one as a dare) which were pretty pointless as the kangaroos could just jump right over them. We spoke to the ranger and he told us where we might find some platypus(es?). So we walked to to a big pong/lake. We saw a turtle in the water, but as it was still there much later on we decided it was probobly dead. The classic "poke it with a stick" test seemed to confirm this.

Anyway we crept silently around the lake looking for platypus. We were ever so quiet. After a while we spotted some in the middle of the lake. They would come up for air, splash around a bit the duck back under. They were pretty far away and we tried to get some good photos. After a while of watching them we moved on to the kuala bit.

They have a massive section an apparently there are only 5 kualas in there. We spent a while walking around until Marion spotted one up in a tree. I would have missed it. It was super cute. We headed back to Canberra after that.

In the evening some of the family came round for tea; John, Luke and his girlfriend Kelly. We had steak and chicken with jacket potatoes. Marion made us have photos of everyone together. Later on we got an early night as we had to get up early the next day to get our bus back to Sydney Airport.

I actually got up around 6am to make some phone calls home. We caught the bus around 8am to the airport and stayed in a rubbish travel lodge type hotel overnight as we had an early flight to NZ the next day.