The road system in Sydney is quite ridiculous I have to say. How on earth are you supposed to get to where you want to when you're not allowed to turn left or right anywhere? Let me expand on that a bit.

We had decided a few days previously that we wanted to go inland a bit and see a few things. Renting a car seemed like the best way to do it. We had done some research during the previous few days and arranged to pick up a car on Sunday morning from a company near King's Cross. I left Claire in the hostel and went to fetch the car. To do this I had to catch a train to King's Cross. Actually, I could have walked. It was only about 2km but I thought it would be quicker and easier to take the train.

Renting the car proved very easy indeed. I was given a brand new Toyota and given directions to a petrol station. Being brand new, the car had only 7km on it. Because of the stupid road system, the car had 21km on it by the time I got back to the hostel. A 2km walk or a 14km drive? Madness I say! At one point I ended up facing the wrong way up a one-way street.

With that debacle behind us, we headed out of a very windy Sydney (carrying our bags out to the car, the wind almost knocked me over a few times) and into the Blue Mountains. To be honest, I wasn't impressed to start off with. However, when we stopped to walk to a lookout, I changed my mind.

We stopped for lunch at Mount Tomah botanic gardens. Brrrrrrrr! We also stopped in a town called Clarence to ride on the Zig-Zag railway. It's been a while since I last had a ride on a steam train. This one gets its name from the way it zig-zags down the mountain. The locomotive itself had apparently just finished being used in a film and was still painted with Korean lettering. Strangely though, the train was wearing a Thomas the Tank Engine face and the stations on the way had Harry Potter names. A bizarre mix.

We stayed that night in the YHA hostel in Katoomba. It was pleasant enough but there was a group of americans who couldn't decide what they wanted to watch in the TV lounge. At first it was funny to be a fly on the wall but after five minutes...

The following day we headed down to the Jenolan caves. Right in the middle of nowhere, these caves were formed a long time ago in the soft limestone rock. We took two tours, one through the impressively big Lucas cave and one into the Orient cave. The guides were very knowledgable and the caves were amazing but it was a shame that there were a few misbehaving children who didn't seem to find the caves that interesting.

It was quite a long drive from there to Parkes so it was dark when we got there. We selected a motel at random and settled in for the night.

Parkes is a small town on the verge of being in the middle of nowhere. Due to favourable weather conditions, a large radio-telescope was built there a number of years ago and became famous by aiding the Apollo moon landings. Worldwide fame was achieved with the release of the film The Dish. This was the sole reason we went to Parkes. Unfortunately the telescope wasn't in use when we were there (coincidentally 35 years minus one day from the date when man first set foot on the moon) as it was being maintained. This meant that it was pointing directly upwards as you can see below.

The visitor centre was fun to look at regardless and we did briefly toy with the idea of coming back at the end of August when they have open days and you can go inside the tower.

We left Parkes just after lunch and started our very long journey to Canberra. On the way, we passed through the town small of Forbes, a neighbour of Parkes. Forbes has two claims to fame, one of them is quite amusing. The first is that it was used for some of the locations in The Dish, the second is that it is twinned with Coventry of all places! I wonder if anyone from Forbes has seen Coventry?

We arrived in Canberra at about 5pm and found a motel to stay in a few kilometres from the centre. We had looked at the YHA but for some reason, hostels in Australia seem really expensive. We spent a little while doing some internet stuff and found out that we had actually gone a bit over budget in the last month or so. Whoops!

We slept in quite late the following morning and managed to drag ourselves in Canberra by midday. Our first stop was Canberra's war memorial. The building is quite large and you get the definate impression that whoever built it actually cared. But then, since Canberra was built from scratch during the 20th century, the planners had a nice blank canvas to work with and you'd expect them to do a good job. From the entrance of the war memorial you can see all the way to the old parliament house and also to the new parliament house just behind it. That was where we headed next.

Being built a very, very modern city, you might be forgiven for thinking that Canberra wouldn't be too nice but I sort of liked what I did see. Especially the parliament building. Completed in 1988 it doesn't have the same character the the House of Commons in London does but it certainly radiates a feeling of power. We took a tour of the building and even got to walk on the grass roof and we got thrown out of a corridor we wandered into by accident. It was great. I'm not sure but I don't think that you can do the same sort of tour in London.

We spent a good portion of the evening in an internet café where I struggled to get someone to burn some CDs for me. Eventually we got back to the room and relaxed for the evening on a diet of noodles and Star Trek. Seven of Nine isn't as nice as I remember though.

The drive back to Sydney was uneventful. It's a shame we picked up a parking ticket before we left Canberra. The parking guy slapped a ticket on the car as we were nearby getting change for the machine. We were literally away for three minutes and could easily have been actually buying a ticket at the time instead and he still would have fined us. We're disputing the ticket.

After checking into the YHA again, we used up the last of our petrol visiting Bondi beach because you have to. It was nice sand. I can imagine that in warmer weather you can't move for all the scantily clad people trying work on their tans.

We dropped the car off and walked the 2km back to the hostel where we made some rather yummy omlettes and did some laundry. Tomorrow, we're off to Melbourne.