Canberra

Many pub quizzers may be interested to know that Canberra is in fact the capital of Australia, not Sydney. For this reason we thought it would be worth the 4 hour coach journey from Sydney and we booked 4 nights in the capital. How wrong we were. We were staying right in the city centre and we walked around and there was no one.....not even a noise....tumbleweed could quite easily have rolled on through and it wouldn't have seemed odd. There really wasn't much to do and even looking around the city at the shops it was growing more and more like Maidstone with every turn of the corner, and this is the capital of a country about 50 times the size of England! After our first day of mooching we decided to attempt to find something to do, and walked about 4 bloody miles in the baking heat to their new Parliament building. It was so fancy! We went inside and saw the House of Representatives and the Senate, it was all very modern, although all taken off from our Houses of Parliament (ha!). By the time we got back we felt this was enough sight seeing for one 'Capital', and went to a bbq held by the hostel. As they probably find plenty of unsatisfied 'Captial seekers' staying in the hostel they provided us with lots of booze and then for some reason our table won a box of wine. It may be made with eggs and fish parts but it was free so we took advantage. Before long we were well on our way and Nic, proving once again to be a hit in Oz, was hit on by Scott, the overweight hostel worker and part time ranch hand, complete with no teeth, using such fantastic pick up lines as 'What do you mean you don't have a boyfriend'?!?! Ha ha ha ha ha. Whilst I left Nic to suffer I talked to some 50 year old Pakistani called Burt about Buddhism. For ages. The things we do when we've had a few!