Canberra Life

After breakfast this morning, we took a walk up Mt. Ainsley, giving us an uninterrupted view over Canberra and, owing to the geometric town planning, straight down to the Parliament.

View from Mount Ainsley

Mt. Ainsley is over 800m elevation, which is the tallest feature around as nothing is allowed to be built higher than the Parliament flagstaff.

At the foot of the hill is a war memorial to the many who served and the significant number of those that died in the name of conflict. We visited the tomb to the unnamed soldier and read solemnly the role call of those sacrificed.

Remembering the fallen

To lighten the mood, our hosts took us to the centre of Canberra's café culture. As I have mentioned before, Canberra can seem a desolate place at first glance, owing to the decision to keep pubs and bars away from the main streets. However, the side streets are teeming with people enjoying coffee, brunch, or a beer.

Lonsdale Roasters on the eponymous Lonsdale Road was no exception and had a number of hipster single-speed bicycles parked up outside and a clientele to match.

On yer fixie

Around the corner, we found a new addition to the area, with a similar bike obsession. Bent Spoke is a craft beer brewpub that has only been open for about eight months. For something so young, it is already well in its stride, offering a grand selection of beers of varying and ambitious styles. The tasting paddle was an ingenious assembly of bike parts, the glasses resting in oversized nuts.

Nuts about craft beer

Of the selection, my favourite was The Frenzy - a raspberry wheat beer infused through the 'hopinator' (or whatever it's called) with more fresh raspberries, blueberries, and wafer ash. K liked Big Nut, a dark, toasty, nutty ale. Special mention has to go to PSI, an imperial saison, which manages to boost but not smother the sour flavours of the farmhouse style with a subtle booziness.

With our minds stimulated through both caffeine and alcohol, we took them to enjoy some artwork at the National Gallery. With only a brief amount of time to spend there, we focused on the aboriginal work. These ranged from eucalyptus bark paintings using natural earth pigments, through synthetic polymer acrylics, to modern pieces that are a comment on current relations between those of aboriginal and European descent.

Dotty about art

In the afternoon, we took a walk in the park around Woden. For a residential area, it was only a short walk from our hosts' home to a beautiful space full of wildlife that could rival the collections of some of the better international zoos.

Cockamamy for cockatoos

Kangaroos, cockatoos, colourful parrots, gallahs, and much more besides, were all within only a few metres of us as we strolled through the park.

Back at the house, another staple of Australian culture was being prepared for dinner: a BBQ. Our host told us that the division of labour in Australian households is for the man to grill the food on the barbecue, while the woman prepares all the accompanying salads and vegetables, plates up the barbecued food, serves and washes up. However, he told us - facetiously - that the etiquette is for everyone to thank the man of the house for a wonderful meal.

Loony for halloumi

We divided ourselves into male and female parties, and I 'oversaw' the barbecue proceedings with a bottle of Little Creatures pale ale. With steak for the meat-eaters, we savoured grilled aubergines, asparagus, portobello mushroom, and halloumi together with a salad of red cabbage, pistachios, chickpea, tahini lemon dressing. Delicious.

Heart of the Nation

Canberra - the capital of Australia in, aptly, the Australian Capital Territory - only came into being in 1913, twelve years after federation, and was constructed following designs selected as part of a competition. As such, it looks much different to other, more organic, Australian cities. The layout is geometric, while billboards, pubs and service stations are prohibited on main roads. These wide, featureless boulevards, coupled with the relatively small amount of traffic, give the impression of a well-appointed ghost town.

Meanwhile, in suburbia, we enjoyed a well-spread family breakfast table, groaning under yoghurts, fruits, toasts and jams, with good coffee from Lonsdale roastery. With a contingent of British around the table, the time-honoured competition between Vegemite and Marmite was played out, to no particularly convincing conclusion. Amusingly, Marmite is branded as "Our Mate" here, as someone else already has the name trademarked.

#Kraft

Being in the capital, we paid a visit to the seat of Government at the Parliament building and the House of Representatives. The building was opened in 1988, designed by New York-based architects, and replaced the previous parliament building. It is largely buried under Capital Hill, the grass on its roof making it unobtrusively blend into the surroundings, but is topped by a huge flagstaff, signalling its location.

Heart of ACT

The inside of the Senate follows the usual horseshoe layout of such rooms, complete with leather upholstery, and apparently emulates the UK House of Lords and its red colour scheme. To the eye, however, the palette seems to err on the pinky salmon end of the spectrum, even going to far as to have pale red Emergency Exit signs.

The Pink Room

We drove down to Parliament square, on the edge of the enormous Lake Burley Griffin that sits at the centre of Canberra and watched the cyclists go by with plastic cable ties affixed to their helmets to deter the overly aggressive seagulls.

The Birds

At the craft and food market, we grazed our way round the nibbles on sale, enjoying the sudden availability of olives, cheese, and other delectables. Soon, we had to admit that proper sustenance was required.

Our hosts took us to Brodburger - a very popular food van that expanded into a very popular restaurant. There was a 45-minute wait and no available seating, so we took our food and ourselves to the park.

Food coma

K and I enjoyed the 'Brodveg', stacks of roasted vegetables - courgette, pepper - and a monstrous amount of halloumi seasoned with spicy mayonnaise. This came with an embarrassment of fries that we failed to finish, but was delicious.

Having seen only deceased kangaroos on the side of the road thus far (5 in total), our host took us to nearby Tidbinbilla nature reserve. However, the promise of inevitable kangaroo sightings was initially unfulfilled.

Undefeated, we took a pleasant walk in the gum trees, whoch were shredding their bark like thick stringy skin, and observed only caged lizards.

Soon, however, the full panoply of the reserve's fauna revealed itself and we saw multiple kangaroos, 'wallaroos', brush-tailed rock wallabies, a cuckaburrah, several dopey koalas, a black swan, and a platypus (one live briefly and another, stuffed, held by the ranger).

Natalie Portman

Quokka's poor cousin

Sitting in an old gum tree

Finally...

We toasted our successful safari with pizza and beers, including representatives from the mainstream end of the Oz craft scene, including Little Creatures pale ale, James Squires 150 lashes, and (slightly more off-piste) Feral Hop Hog.

All hail the ale that's pale

Bondi to the Blue Mountains

Sydney's weather has been wall-to-wall sunshine since our arrival, giving us the impression that everyone lives a perpetual outdoor, 'Home and Away'-style, beach-based existence. The drizzly grey sky that greeted us this morning, then, was somewhat of a shock. Still, we decided to pay a quick visit to the infamous Bondi beach before leaving the city.

Undeterred by the poor weather, the Sydneysiders were still engaged in outdoor pursuits on the beach front, backed by the powerful waves that make the area such a draw for surfers.

Bondi beach

We took a far more leisurely approach of poached eggs on toast at the pavilion café, followed by a quick post-prandial stroll along the promenade. Bathers in the shark-proof enclosures were buffeted by the pounding sea that leapt the small protective walls, turning it into a wave pool, and I wondered just how much protection it offered if a passing shark managed to surf in on the same swell.

Shark-proof pool

The sunny weather couldn't be held at bay for long and by the time we had finished our walk, the sky was blue and the temperature soaring. Sadly our time in Sydney was at an end. Our Canberra-based friend offered to drive us to the iconic Blue Mountains on the way back to the nation's capital.

Only an hour or so out of Sydney, the Blue Mountains (so-called for their distant hazy appearance), for part of the Great Dividing Range. We stopped at Katoomba for views out over the vast national park, of Mount Solitary and the "Three Sisters".

Three Sisters

The vista was breathtaking - a natural beauty that is taken advantage of by 'Scenic World', where a cable car drops visitors down onto the forest floor, a near-vertical railway hauls them back up the side of the hill, and a skyway crosses Katoomba falls.

In amongst the awe-inspiring sights, which drew our gaze back repeatedly to the valley presided over by the Three Sisters, we managed to fit in some lunch. Craving green things, we both selected a salad of baby beet, spinach, walnuts, and goats cheese, which was pleasingly and simply dressed with balsamic vinegar.

Healthy lunch

The Blue Mountains were a slight detour from our journey into the "heart of the nation", so we wound our way back east to pick up the Hume Highway. This involved passing from New South Wales into the Australian Capital Territory, created solely as home to Canberra. The trip took roughly four hours on mostly clear, well-surfaced roads, passing eery sight of a giant dry Lake George - a reminder of the drought that Australia is suffering.

In Canberra, our friend introduced us to his house - ensconced in the suburban bliss of Woden. Here, we dined heartily around the family table on mushroom tart with a delicious potato and beetroot salad, with sorrel, rocket, and a maple syrup-based dressing. We enjoyed the familiar pleasure of chatting with friends, while we quaffed generous amounts of good Australian red wine.