Canberra & The Snowy Mountains

Wednesday 7th September and we walked over to Hertz to pick up our hire car and were upgraded from a Toyota Echo to a Corolla - bonus! Got on the road as quickly as possible and started our south bound drive to visit my aunt Mary Anne in Adaminaby which was near the Snowy Mountains. We quickly left Sydney via a long underground tunnel before emerging into glorious sunshine and drove along a toll motorway towards Canberra. Unfortunately the car only had a CD player and we’d left our CD’s at Elizabeth’s so we were unable to use our MP3 player without a tape deck. We managed to find a really good radio station called Triple J which played mostly new music with a few old Indie classics. So we drove along occasionally singing along to the music, admiring the scenery and straight roads. After a few hours we stopped off in Picton for a short break and for what turned out to be the first of a few sausage rolls on this trip. These ones were bigger than Gregg’s back home but just didn’t cut the mustard with Chris - Round 1 to Gregg’s. After 4 hours we arrived in Canberra and were soon settled into the huge YHA Hostel on the outskirts of the city.



After the federation of all the Australian separate colonies in 1901 a decision had to be made where to place the national capital. After bickering between Sydney and Melbourne to become the capital, land was purchased roughly halfway between them and Canberra was created and finally became the seat of national government in 1927. So we headed towards Parliament house as the sun went down, the modern looking building was opened in 1988 to replace Old Parliament House which was supposed to be a temporary accommodation but was in use for 61 years. The Parliament is set on a hill overlooking the new city and the brilliantly named picturesque Lake Burley Griffin.


We then headed back into the small commercial centre of Canberra and went for a wander around the shops before having dinner in a Chinese restaurant called Sammy’s Kitchen. We had read in Bill Bryson’s “Down Under” book that the choice of food available in Canberra wasn’t up to much so when we saw this place in a shopping precinct packed out on a Wednesday night we thought that it couldn’t be that bad. We couldn’t even get a seat in the restaurant and were placed at a table out in the precinct but it was well worth it when the food came. There doesn’t seem to be much to do in Canberra so afterwards we returned to the hostel and watched a few DVD’s before hitting the sack for the night.

At 9am we once again headed south this time towards Cooma the nearest big town to my aunts. My aunt has lived in Australia for almost 30 years and I last remember seeing her when I was about 6 or 7, but talking to her on the phone you would think she was still in Glasgow as her accent hasn’t changed at all. On arriving in Cooma we stopped for petrol and a quick bite to eat and this is where Chris had another huge sausage roll (a major rival to Greggs). We then got directions to Adaminaby which is 50km from Cooma and had another lovely drive along a quiet road and managed to find my aunt’s green and white house quite easily.

We were quickly made welcome both by her and her two small dogs. We blethered for quite a while and it was so spooky that despite my aunt having left some time ago several of her mannerisms were just like my dad - boy was that a bit freaky. Her two dogs were lovely with Cindy constantly wanted petted and Buster just making sure before he came near us. Her house was originally in Old Adaminaby and was lifted and transported further up the hill as they were making way for a dam. We met her two friends Violet and Bill who were from Lanarkshire and also hadn’t lost their accent even thought they have been here since the 50‘s. Bill could talk for Oz and showed us around his impressive house which was transported to it’s present location in three huge parts along with his pride and joy a huge shed which he built himself. He is 74 and doesn’t look much older than 60 and is a sprightly old chap still managing DIY and building projects at every possible opportunity in between his other love which is fishing. We went back for dinner and our highlight was chips made from fresh potatoes - ye cannae beat them and we talked some more before heading to bed.


After breakfast Bill came round to give us a drive around the town, the lake and where Old Adaminaby was before the river was dammed. He showed us where my Uncle Robert used to fish and where he caught all his best fish, he also seemed to know almost everyone who lived in the towns or he had something to do with either fixing their house or helping them with some manual task. The strange thing was that most of the people were from Europe and he didn’t actually mention anybody here as being Australian. This is where we managed to see our first real live Kangaroo and not one at the side of the road joining the increasing road kill statistics. The weather had changed from the previous days glorious sunshine into a murky grey sky and we could hear thunder storms in the distance before it started to really pour. We decided to leave around 2’ish to give us a chance to get back to Canberra at a reasonable time since we had to drive a bit slower due to the rain.

Arrived back in Canberra around 5 and done pretty much the same as our last time here apart from visiting the Parliament building. Just like to say to Mr Bryson that if he ever returns to Canberra that he should head to “Sammy’s Kitchen” as once again we had a great meal. Next morning it was up and out the hostel by 7:30 to give us time to drive the car back to Sydney before 11:30 am once again we had a glorious day to drive back.