Canberra- Australia's Capital

Inside The Houses of Parliament

Houses of Parliament

Aoife, Amanda and Dave

Whilst living in Sydney I decided I would like to see Australia's capital. Let's face it Australia is a huge country and seeing that Canberra was only a three hour drive from Sydney I was as well to go. Back in June, myself, Aoife, Amanda and our English pal Dave Bushrod from our hostel left on the 8am bus from Central Station. The bus was 70 aud return. As Australia's towns and cities are so spread out you will literally drive for miles and miles and not see anything. I could be wrong but I actually don't even think we passed a shop on that three hour bus journey.
We arrived in Canberra at 11am and our evening bus was leaving at 6pm. We had a quick discussion over breakfast as to what we wanted to do and see in Australia's capital. We decided to go the Houses of Parliament and the War Memorial Museum. This is where we made a bit of a mistake. The layout of Canberra is very deceiving, as in it looks like you are a lot closer to the buildings than you actually are. We ended up walking well over an hour to The Houses of Parliament. Just get a taxi!! There were a lot of tours taking place in this building but we just walked around ourselves. We walked into one of the rooms which looked similiar to The Dail in Dublin, well from what I can see from RTE news. There was another tour going on in this room and we were taking pictures. A place where you really should be quiet. This is where Amanda decided to start singing 'Take a dirty picture' to which posh English Dave responded in horror 'AMANDA'. We had a good LOL at that.

View from War Memorial Museum to Houses of Parliament

View from Houses of Parliament to The War Memorial Museum

Canberra at dusk

Grave of an unknown soldier killed at war

Aoife's cousin Jonathan was in training for the Australian army and he was based in Canberra. We met him at The War Memorial Museum. I found this place interesting as there was a special section about Australia's role in the Vietnam war, which the guys from the easy riders tour taught us back in Vietnam earlier in the year. I would recommend it to anyone visiting Canberra.
After this Jonathan drove us to Canberra shopping centre, where we dined out in some sort of oriental restaurant, followed by a coffee shop where we stuffed ourselves with cake and tea. A pleasant ending to a lovely, leisurely day out.

xoxo