Thursday 15 Oct 2009. Wellington, North Island, NZ

Here we are in the land of grandchildren, such fun, a bit trying at times. Need a mental shift in this house!

I left off in Parkes NSW, where we had visited the radiotelescope. The 3D movie was amazing, the space walk really made you feel you were doing it yourself. So the story goes, the NASA equipment had a failure which meant that photos could not be relayed to Earth. Parkes to the rescue!Suddenly this tiny place in Oz was cataputed into World news and fame.
In addition to all this excitement we also met and investigated a few interesting campervan/motorhomes in the car park. You never see 2 the same, and many of them have been built by their owners.
Sweeping panoramas, lots of birds, lots of "beware wombat" signs, but we only saw dead ones by roadside. Ahh. Passed a place called Dunedoo and it reminded us of the Perth suburb called Inaloo. What's in a name!

Next major stop was Canberra, so we drove via Grenfell (a pretty rural town in lovely countryside and former home of my good friend Sandy), where we free camped next to the Company Dam, built to service the railway steam engines. Had a look round the town and met someone who new Sandy. Then it was through Young (Cherry capital of OZ) and into Canberra area where we were somewhat perturbed by the brown colour of the atmosphere. We checked into a motel for some comfort in cold weather and a chance to give Rita another clean. Did we ever strike lucky! That night we had a huge storm with red dust, howling wind, pouring rain, thunder, lightening and even hail! I felt very guilty about poor Rita all alone in the car park, while we turned the tv up and poured more wine.

Canberra was a very pleasant surprise, lots to see and do, and as it was school hols, although it was busy, watching kids getting involved in things was very entertaining. We managed to fit in the new and old Parliament Houses, the Captain Cook Waterjet, National Gallery, the National Museum, the National War Memorial and Museum and the Science Museum, a very hands on place called Questacon, and where a very lifelike dinosaur swing his head right in my face and snarled his big sharp teeth at me - very scarey!
Each night we finished at the Canberra Sailing Club for a pleasant dinner, thanks to our reciprocal membership, and where we watched dragon boat training.
The art in the war memorial was far more emotive and interesting than the gallery, and the diorama models of various kinds of warfare were beautifully done and effective. We noticed Aus. soldiers in uniform showing Vietnamese soldiers around. How times change.
Lots of Cherry blossom trying to come out but too cold. The flower festival was on but too cold to enjoy.

Next stop was Cooma where we came across the info centre for the Snowy River
hydrosystem, about 25 years in the making, in the 1930s, it involves about 25 dams and the designer was knighted. I had a chance to try and cycle enough power to boil a kettle - at my speed it would never have boiled! It was exciting to be in the Snowy Mountains, a place I have long wanted to visit. Of course it is a huge area, and we only brushed with it. Maybe another time we will explore deeper

Our night stop was a free camp in a tiny village called Nimmitabel, next to the Country Club - we're getting the hang of this! The locals were intrigued to know why we were there and we explained how we like to spread our money out rather than spend it in obvious large centres. A few drinks, a nice meal and some local gossip, with a free camp site is all we ask, especially on a cold night, which it was there, bitter in fact, fleece, beanie, gloves, and that was in bed (only joking!)but we are snug enough in Rita.

Our drive was taking us through pretty high alpine country and a very steep descent from Snowy mountains to coast, where we discovered such glorious terrain that we decided to drive north to Bermagui, where they filmed "the man who sued God" and do a circuit back to Merimbula. On the way we found (at the end of a horrible 10km dirt road) a Nat. Park Gillards Beach, and camped next to a 34 year old marine ranger from E gippsland in Victoria, Mike,who had his 10 yr old nephew on their first ever camp together. What fun to be 10 and have such an uncle. They were surfies seeking waves. What we found near our camp was a 3 metre lace monitor, once of our larger lizards; I really though 'Komodo Dragon" when I saw it. I thought it was dead, it was so still, but Mike assured me it was very much alive and not to leave any food around. A few hours later it was gone...but where??? There were roos everywhere, of all sizes. We were also treated to our very first look at wild potoroos, small furry things that come out at night, running all over the place from dusk onwards, impossible to photograph, but very special. We had a great evening, shared a campfire, cooked snaggers (sausages), sang, did party tricks (yes, I had to sing Horace the Horse and John did Turkey Rhubarb and Daniel Taylor, not much changes!), played guitar and told yarns. It turned out to be a great place to stay and the 10 kms going out was not nearly so bad!
That was the night that Geelong won the grand final and poor St Kilda will have to wait another year to try again.

So on thru Cobanga, Quamma, Bega (of cheese fame), Potoroo Palace, home for injured wildlife, where we saw cockatoos, echidnas, dingoes, emus, pheasants, native geese, peacocks but no potoroos, but we were ok, we had seen wild ones.

Eden was a must for me, home of the famed WA pianist David, who suffered a huge nervous breakdown in his youth, from pressure of performance. He got back to playing in a Perth cafe, where he was rediscovered. His now wife helped him to recover sufficiently to play major concerts on the world stage. We have seen him perform several times, and he is challenging to watch as he is far from what we would call normal, but his performances are electrical. Eden itself was cold and damp, tho v pretty, but we discovered the lovely Seahorse Inn, like a small stately home near the beach, where you can camp in the grounds and dine with views to die for. Unfortunately there was a power cut that night and dinner was off, so we had to cook on our metho stove. No matter, it was another of those magic moment/places.Next day we visited Eden's Killer Whale Museum, very interesting. there was one old whale apparently who used to lead the sea catch into the bay for the fishermen.

We then drove from NSW in rain and wind to Orbost, now in Victoria. We booked into Snowy River CVP, visited a local pub with roaring fireplace and caught up on local gossip, yarns and history. Next day we were unable to get to Lakes Entrance where Snowy meets the sea, due to nasty road accident, but the diversion was pretty, through real emerald green fields, a real treat for a couple of sandgropers from WA; this depth of green is but a distant memory of Wales.

So we are now in Victoria on this blog. I'll take a break and continue later.