We worked out last night that we have begun to exceed our intended budget, so we'll have to start taking it a bit slower for a while: Australia is a lot more expensive than we anticipated. Which unfortunately means dormitories for the next few weeks... I'm not impressed!

We were woken up at about 7 by a swarm of parakeets trying to massacre each other with chiansaws right outside our room. They continued for the next hour or so, and then I went back to sleep. We left the motel eventually, and wandered out to the Australian War Memorial, because the guide book said it was worth a look. It certainly was, and the enormous building is beautifully placed to show Parliament House through an archway.

It was actually a very moving tribute to every Australian killed in every war ever. There were two long walls of names, with poppies poked into the gaps between the sections. It looked like it was a well-visited place.

Our next port of call was the parliament building, very new and shiny and built under a hill. Actually, the hill was removed, the building built, and the hill was replaced almost exactly as it was, but about three feet taller. They're very into symbolism here, and while the place was lovely and clean and smelled of fresh paint, there was maybe a little too much underlying meaning in it all. But it was very pretty and impressive and symmetrical. We had a guided tour after we were x-rayed and metal-detected, which was worth doing (especially as it was free!) because we wouldn't have picked up on any of the things we were shown, and I learned a lot about Australian parliamentary proceedings, which was more interesting than it sounded. We had a chance to walk over the grass roof of the building (again, it's symbolic or something) and saw the House of Representatives, based on the House of Commons, and the Senate, based on the House of Lords. They even kept the green and red colours, but in an Australian way.

We spent the afternoon at the National Museum of Australia, another very funky building. There was a lot of pointless giant Braile on the outside of the building, and a giant tarmac hill to play on, with islands in the water to jump on. Maybe we weren't supposed to, but I did. The museum was quite remarkable, masses of exhibits and dead things relating to Australia. Very contemporary, but in a good way. A bit hard to navigate, but then, I suppose modern things are supposed to be.

When they chucked us out of the museum and I had jumped on enough concrete islands, we went into town briefly to find a supermarket and an internet. We had supper back at the motel and watched too many episodes of programmes we'd never seen before and will not watch again, but it was strangely addictive.