Due to the Risk of Kangaroo Attack...

I had hoped to be able to embellish this blog with some photos, of which we have taken several in the last few days, but alas this internet cafe will not cooperate.

More on the kangaroo attacks anon. Since Gina last blogged, a lot's gone on - we left Tasmania and came to the mainland. Melbourne is a pleasant city, orderly and clean, with businesspeople walking around everywhere with double windsor knots in their ties. In this way it is eerily reminiscent of Toronto. We spent a day toodling around there, where we dipped into some shops and tried out the local market.

We then set out for a day's drive on the Great Ocean Road, which the tourist folks absolutely fawn over, and has its highlights, but in reality is just a lot of fluff. We enjoyed the drive, though, and it was scenic, but they make you think it's another Pacific Coast Highway, which I can assure you it's not, not even having driven the Pacific Coast Highway.

We ended the day in a town called Warranabol, or something like that, which we couldn't learn to pronounce so we just dubbed it Wannamoveabowel. Then a day's drive through the south coast to a town called Lakes Entrance. This was a pretty boring day, and we killed ourselves braving the Melbourne city streets on our way back through because it costs $11 in tolls to pass through. Isn't that ridiculous?

At Lakes Entrance we stayed at a motel where the attendant, upon chatting with us, informed us that her uncle ran a motel in Siam Reap, Cambodia, where we were planning to go. She offered us a discount. There you have it, folks - the world's smallest motel chain.

We are now in Canberra, Australia's capitol city. Canberra is often referred to in travel literature with superlatives like "much maligned", but we came here anyway. We think we found out why it's so poorly regarded, though.

As you may not know, Australia was only federated into a unified country in 1901, and they decided to create a capitol in a neutral location - much like our own Washington DC. New South Wales helpfully ceded a kidney-shaped spot in the middle of nowhere, which is now known as the Australian Capitol Territory (ACT for short). Therein, Canberra was built as one of the only major planned cities of the 20th century, the only one I can think of other than it being Brasalia, in Brazil.

Canberra, being a child of the automobile era, managed to evolve into a city of 350,000 without managing to be a city at all. It's horrifically spread out, and all the roads are very wide, with at least one layer of thick trees between buildings and the road; Bill Bryson described it as a park with a city hidden within, and I think the description is apt. The result is a wide open, leafy, yet utterly characterless expanse of a city.

Then again, we just got here and tomorrow we're heading out to see what the city has to offer. We'll report back on what we find.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of photos but the internet cafe time is running out. Hi to all at home, hope all is well!

-b