To Canberra and Back

Thurs - Sun
We baid our farewells to the Anglesea house and drove East and then North to the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) which is completely surrounded by NSW (New South Wales) and contains the capital city - Canberra.
On the way we stopped for lunch in Glenrowan where Ned Kelly made his last stand. We were the only participants in the 1.30pm showing of the Ned Kelly story in an animatronic theatre. We moved from room to room whilst the robotic characters told the story. There were lots of distractions (like rats running across mantlepeices and a man and a dog peeing into a bucket) so I don't feel that I know the whole story. There were also a couple of times when I nearly jumped out of my skin as bullets were fired and then a building collapsed around us - so maybe that's when I missed the gist of the narrative!
We reached Canberra as darkness fell and arrived at Milli and Max's house (Milli was my boss in my first job when I left school, at Acorn financial services - a real crock!).
We stayed with Mil and Max until Sunday. We went out and into the centre of the city; it is the weirdest city that I have ever been to. For those of you that don't know it was because of the squabbles between Sydney and Melbourne as to who should be the capital city that finally a brand new capital was built about half way between them. Canberra is like Milton Keynes; loads of concrete and loads of roundabouts; but much nicer... it has more bush than buildings; a beautiful man made lake through its centre and suburbs so far apart that for the unknowing (like us) it seems that they are completely different towns.
We went up a tower on a hill which gives 360 degree views over the city and then we went to a discovery centre where we learnt about loads of new technologies that the Aussie government is getting involved with. We also visited a science centre where Milli's oldest daughter, Em, works which is a bit like @ at Bristol or the Science museum in London with loads of hands on exhibits. We played loads of board games in the evenings and Mil and I managed to go out (on the pretext of doing the shopping) and spend an hour or so in a cafe catching up on all the gossip!
We were blessed with really fine weather for our visit and even had a picnic down by the lake!
Sunday, after bacon and marmalade sandwiches for breakfast (Milli is the only other person in the world that I know of who likes them too), we started the drive back to Melbourne.