Ok so how many of you can name the capital of Australia?



Anyone?



No it's not Sydney or Melbourne, its Canberra, that little old place that no-one visits and everyone who has been tells you not to visit! So what did we do? We went to visit!

After getting the bus up from Melbourne overnight we were pretty knackered so went to sleep for most of the first day! The second day we headed out to find both the old and new parliament houses, which we did and had a look around and got a free tour. Unfortunatly the weather was pretty dire so it didn't really inspire us to go exploring! It brightened up over the next few days and we went to check out the Australian War Memorial and the National Museum. The memorial is pretty impressive & also a big war musuem with loads of things to see, we took advantage of the free tour that was just as well or you could get lost in there! There were stories of Australian soldiers during the second world war in Borneo who had been sent on a death march by the Japanese through the very same jungle that we had been to in February. It was quite eerie, especially when we learnt that only six had survived it.

The National Musuem was a more cheery place with more 'hands on' exhibits. Even managed to learn a bit about the scoring in Aussie Rules Football! We also went on a big old trek to 'Black Mountain' where we went up the Telstra tower (might as well be a light house because its tiny!) it was good to get a view over the city and the lake (for those that don't know Canberra is built around a lake).

Canberra does have some nice little suburbs that have cool cafes, pubs and bars, although the shopping part of town in the centre did remind me of Swindon (and no-one wants that!) The population is pretty small and it seems as though the only people that live there are working in embassies/parliament or some other government office!

Overall I don't know why people give Canberra so much stick, there is loads to see and do and the majority of it is free! If you've got a couple of days to spare we'd recommend it.