Canberra

We were away for a long weekend in Canberra last week. It's a three hour + drive from Sydney so a relatively easy trip to make. We had mixed feelings about the place even before we got there - you tend to get a tepid response from Aussies when you mention the city. One colleague in particular advised us to see everything we could on our first visit as he predicted it would be our only visit! We'd also been advised to take our bikes with us as that's the best way to get around the city. And they were right, it's a place blessed with wide open boulevards, a large sculpted lake, lots of green, and lots of bike tracks. And all of this devoid of people! It was eerily empty for a capital city. Our first visit of the weekend was to the National Gallery - we arrived on bikes and so went in via a side entrance. We didn't see another punter until we'd been through at least five large galleries, it was just us and the omnipresent security staff. This is a gallery with a massive budget and priceless art on display. It just goes to show that 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink' - or whatever the saying is. Canberra, as you may know, was only conceived a century ago and despite all the money, excellent town planners and the best architects money can buy can't guarantee a buzzing capital city. It's people that do that (and perhaps the gravity of history). That said, we had a very pleasant break drinking in culture between leisurely bike rides and learning a little Australian history along the way. An interesting place, but no, we won't be rushing back.

It was a good five degrees cooler than Sydney so the drop in temperature and a good number of deciduous trees dropping their leaves gave us a real autumnal feel - just in the nick of time as winter officially starts this week. The nights are drawing in so the working weeks are rather routine at the moment. We're already debating about where our next trip should be. Watch this space.