Ok, I’ll never get around to typing all that I wanted to. Since I’m far behind I’ll skip a lot of the details and focus on the highlights. Here goes...
Eden is a fun little town to visit. It has quite an interesting history with whaling that could (and I’m sure does, somewhere) fill volumes. I never would have heard any of this history if a certain bellydancer didn’t tempt me to visit.
Yasmin turned out to be a lot of fun. She was preparing for her own ‘round-the-world experience and peppered me with questions throughout the time I was there. She had another CouchSurfer from Melbourne visiting at the time and we basically spent most of the time watching videos and chatting about travels.
Once again I left too soon. Two nights at a place is hardly enough time to get a good feel for the towns you visit or the people that inhabit them. But I was in a hurry and I had one place left to visit before catching my flight to New Zealand. I had to see the curious place that is Australia’s capital.
Sometime after noon on the 22nd I was dropped off outside of town on the lonely road to Canberra. I was at the top of a hill where I could see the cars coming in my direction for the better part of a minute. Well, I could have seen them IF there were cars coming my way. 20 minutes passed with just three passing cars who displayed little interest in picking up a hitcher. I was getting a little nervous.
I changed my sign from simply “Canberra” to the clever “From Texas to Canberra”. That seemed to do the trick. The next car that passed picked me up. I was on my way.
Even with just one day to visit there I just had to see Canberra. I had only in the last couple of months even discovered that the Australian capital WAS Canberra. Who knew? And when travelers and locals alike hear you want to visit the capital city they almost all want to know why. Canberra has a reputation of being a strange city. It’s layout was planned from the beginning and the streets all form a circular shape around various parks and landmarks. It’s characterization is that of a “movie set city” where nothing feels like it’s real. I just had to visit.
In Canberra I met up with my Matt from CouchSurfing. I was just staying one night in Canberra but Matt quickly made the most of it. We went almost directly to his girlfriend’s house where she and her sisters and friends were having a BBQ. The Australians are quite the hospitable bunch and wasted no time in welcoming me in. After the BBQ we went into town to not one but three different pubs followed by excellent pizza from a street vendor. Why isn’t the pizza in the US as good as the rest of the world’s??
The next morning I got a ride to the airport with two of Matt’s girlfriend’s sisters (confused yet?) who happened to be going that way. I didn’t get to see many of the peculiarities Canberra is reputed for in my short time there. Instead I had a great time with fantastic people and look forward to visiting the city in the desert again.
Posted January 30, 2005 08:39 PM @ (GMT - 6)
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