Canberra is like a huge sculptured garden. It was basically built in the middle of Sydney and Melbourne for the soul purpose of being the capital city. It's very spread out, impossible to go shopping and expensive. Unless you do a the free things, like this. A trip to the war memorial with a free tour, a drive to the lookout for a failed picnic as it rained, then through memorial drive to Capital Hill to get a free tour around the parliament building. As if that wasn't enough free in my life, we got (and paid for) steak and other meat for a free barbecue. We just avoided the rain. Good times!

Then came the really impressive bit. The drive to Thredbo was unbelievable. I didn't realise Thredbo is actually a ski resort in the Snowy Mountains until I got there. We drove in convoy on the dark through two full hours of a giant thunderstorm. At one point I probably could have managed without headlights, as we had our own blinding strobe light in the sky! When we finally got to Thredbo YHA, we had to park elsewhere, and that's when Harmen and I had an impromptu wash, walking back in sheets of rain.

We had two nights here, so the next day we drove around (after some car shuffling) to Snowy Mountain Pass, and walked to the peak there. We then took a walk to and around Rainbow Lake, which was beautiful in the clear sky. We chanced upon a snake on our way back. Luckily we didn't step on it. The only other bother was the relentless swarm of flies around the place.