My trip started on a high note when I went to pick up my very compact hire car to find that I had been upgraded to a Mitsibishi Outlander 4WD with all the bells and whistles you could ever want. Just goes to show that living in a country community has its benefits as the owner of the local Avis car hire is both a distant relative and family friend. He also insisted that I keep the car for an extra day but only paid for the three. Who am I to complain?
So armed with lots of CD's and some carrots to munch on (I have become addicted to lovely sweet, fresh, crunchy, yummy carrots) I hit the road. First town, Cargo a mere 4 miles from where I grew up. Now the main street only boasts a shop/post office, the village hall and the pub. Next town along is Canowindra, famous for its dog legged main street and for being one of the centers of ballooning and of course for being the place that I went to High School. Canowindra is set on the Belabula river and the surrounding countryside lay large and relatively flat covered in all the different shades of green interspersed with bright yellow canola crops. You could be mistaken into thinking that the drought was at an end until you look closely at the size of the crops. I had to keep reminding myself that I was seeing the landscape in the winter and not summer as I usually do. Being the beginning of spring, new born lambs pranced around their mothers, flocks of black faced sheep lay in the sunshine and surprisingly I caught the odd glimpse of the long necked regal profile of Alpacas sitting like sentries guarding the sheep. What a wonderful reminder of Peru. The sky seemed huge, it is amazing how little you actually see of the sky living in the city. Here it goes on for ever and is the most deepest shade of blue. I have never seen skies like Australia anywhere else in the world. It is something to be seen to really understand what I mean.
Before I knew it, Cowra loomed ahead. Cowra is best known for having a Prisoner Of War (POW) camp there during WWII. This camp housed 2000 Italian POW's on one side and 2000 Japanese POW's on the other side. The Italians were model prisoners and they did not even really need to be guarded. In fact most of them worked on the farms around the countryside and came and went as they pleased. It seemed they were just happy to be in sunny, warm Australia after the cold muck of the war. The Japanese however were a different kettle of fish. They were not happy to be there at all. It wasn't just having the POW camp that made Cowra famous as there were a number of these around the country, it was the fact that there was a mass break out from this camp by the Japanese. Many kamakazi Japanese believed that being incarcerated was dishonorable and not good karma so one night they staged a suicidal mass break out in an attempt to return to Japan. They soon realised they were in the middle of no-where and rather than returning to the POW camp preferred the more honorable route of committing suicide and were thus found hanging the next day from sheds around the district.
I decided to take the low bridge over the Lachlan River and passed by massive pylons covered with beautiful modern Aboriginal Art and then set of for the slightly longer drive to Boorowa. On the way the landscape became a little more hilly. Now I needed to be a little more vigilant with looking for kangaroos as it was approaching dusk, the time that roos are on the move. I have first hand experience of being hit by roos bounding across the road without a care in the world, and I can tell you that in my experience the roo often comes off better than the car. They are one huge piece of muscle and can thus leave a pretty big ding in the car. But instead of roos all I saw was huge flocks of white cockatoos converging on the surrounding paddocks in search of recently planted grain. I am sure the farmers were less than impressed but they were certainly a spectacular site, white against verdant green.
It was an easy drive to Boorowa only meeting the odd car and huge double trucks and of course the policeman waiting patiently by the side of the road with his speed camera waiting to catch an unsuspecting speeder. I was lucky that a couple of cars met me just before the policeman and flashed their lights warning that a policeman was waiting around the corner. Of course I wasn't speeding so did not need to be warned!! Boorowa... now what is it famous for? Well for me it is famous as the place that my car has broken down far too many times. And I am not just talking about one car breaking down, but virtually every car I ever drove on this road. This road is the one that I regularly travelled as I lived in Canberra for about 12 years, having studied at the Australian National University and then continued working there. As Boorowa is almost exactly in the middle of the trip between home and Canberra and really there is not a lot there, it is the worst place to break down in, and I have had to leave a couple of cars there to be fixed and had to get someone to drive a long distance to pick me up. So it is always with trepidation that I begin the drive to Boorowa. I am sure it really is a nice little town, in fact it is also the place that we choose to meet with family sometimes being the middle point, so we have had some fun days and some very cold days, meeting the extended family in the local park for a picnic lunch. Dad also assures me that they do the best scones, jam and cream with real homemade jam!!
By now dusk has laid its mantle over the countryside and as the trees have thickened by the side of the road, it really is the witching hour when it comes to the need to be aware of roos. But I was lucky to see none, at least none that were alive. There was a lot of evidence of roo activity by the number of carcasses on the side of the road, obviously hit by trucks travelling by night. Trucks come off a lot better than roos when they are hit. Many local vehicles have what we call “roo bars” on the front of their vehicles, strong metal bars so that if you hit a roo with the front of your car you are more likely to survive the hit, though the roo is usually not so lucky. I did not have a “roo bar” so was being very careful. Before I knew it I had passed the sign welcoming me to the Australian Capital Territory, Canberra. However you would never know that you were in the Capital City of Australia. My sister lives in the other side of the city and believe it or not, I drove across most of the city and did not see a single house until I was a couple of hundred metres from Kristin's house.
Canberra is the largest inland city in Australia, yet appears to be more like an extremely large park with a city hidden inside it. Each suburb is divided by paddocks, forests, lakes etc so whilst being in the middle of the city it can seem as though you are actually in the country. Along the route I took, I could see street lights perched high above the trees but the houses were completely hidden by the thousands of trees that make up Canberra. I read in Bill Brysons book “Down Under” (a book that I highly recommend reading) that Canberra had 10 000 acres (about 4000 hectares or 40 km²) of parks, now if you compare that to the size of Central Park NY with 768 acres and Hyde Park in London with 340 acres, you begin to realise just how much parkland there is! What is also interesting about Canberra is that there is not one city centre but four, Civic, Belconnen, Woden and Tuggeranong.
So how did Canberra get to be like this? Apparently in the early 1900's both Sydney and Melbourne were fighting over who was going to be the capital city of Australia. So rather than chose between the two, someone decided they would build a city between Sydney and Melbourne and that would become the capital, and thus in 1913 Canberra was born. NSW gave a parcel of land that was definitely not much good for farming for the capital to be built on, rather a long way from anywhere and not even by the coast. Canberra is an entirely purpose built, planned city designed by two architects from Chicago USA and set around a huge man made lake. The entire road system is circular instead square gridded which causes many a head ache for visitors as they find themselves literally driving around in circles. As the centre of Government, it is viewed as a public service town and because of the deliberate and controlled planning it is often thought of as heartless and sterile. But I always found it a pleasant city to live in, for me it was more of a cross between a city and the country and thus I was more at home. The leafy suburbs and open wooded areas invite the native wildlife to gather in abundance and it is not at all uncommon to see kangaroos and wallabies in the heart of the city! Bicycle paths meander throughout the whole city linking suburbs and keeping riders away from traffic. It certainly is a great outdoors city with plenty of sailing, rowing, running, riding, and sports of every persuasion. I have spent many a day watching my niece Tahlia play either soccer (football) or futsal (indoor soccer).
But I am not really here to enjoy the sites of Canberra but to visit family, especially my nieces and nephews. Unfortunately (or as it turned out fortunately) Molly aged 1 and Archie 3 years old both had a serious cold. Now I say fortunately as this meant that Archie was happy to sit quietly on the lounge and snuggle, being read copious stories with a particular bent toward Bob and Builder and anything that had diggers and animals in it! A stark contrast to the otherwise very busy and often defiant little boy who tares around the house getting into anything and everything possible. It was so nice to be actually able to sit quietly and cuddle. However as the days wore on and he got progressively better, he also got more active and by the time I left, Archie Rascal had definitely emerged.
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