We left the rain behind us in Taralga and headed for Canberra.  We were staying just outside the city in the mountains called Cotter Campground.  We found the site easily and settled in for the night.  We took a trip to the surrounding area to Cotter Dam.  This was an impressive piece of architecture.  We decided that it would be good to get a birds eye view and decided to go to the top of the the dam.  The walk was well worth it, you could imagine the building of this and the amount of water it holds is humongous.

It was very peaceful at the campsite – not many people on site and was well looked after.  the following day we decided to head into town.  Our first port of call was the Australian Mint.  We were treated to a free tour by Edy who was very informative.  They showed us how the coins were made and told us the history of money in Australia.  The orange thing in the picture is the computer controlled arm which slowly tops up the hoppers to feed the stamping machines this is all weight controlled and secure….

After the mint we went to Questacon.  This was like the science museum, all hands on and very interesting.  We went to a great talk about space, the speaker was funny but very informative.  We had a play on all the items and we really enjoyed our time here.

The following day we decided to head our of Canberra more into the wild and went to Tidbinbilla National Park.  We were greeted by very friendly rangers who advised us on where to go and what to do.  We first went on a short walk round the lower part of the national park.  Here we saw hundreds of kangaroos, this made Phil extremely happy as we hadn’t seen any live wild kangaroos all the time we had been here.  After the walk we headed further into the park and went to see the koalas.  There were some in a small area which were obviously there for some breeding reasons and then we walked further into the trail and saw koalas high up in trees.  They looked so comfy sitting in their trees fast asleep.  We went to the sanctuary and we were treated to seeing the pelicans being fed.  A short but informative talk was given by the rangers and we were told that there were flat billed platypus was in the lake.  We spent a good time watching for the platypus and were treated to a playful one for about half and hour.  WE also saw a red bellied black snake about 5 foot long from about 4 feet away which was great.

We decided not to do another day in Canberra and headed off towards the coast.  We headed down to a caravan park in Tuross Head.  Tuross Head has a lake on one side and the beach on the other.  Our site backed onto the lake.  We took the scenic route round the town which was most impressive and back to the site for a bit more fishing – still no fish!!!

The following day we hired a boat to go out on the lake to see if we could catch any fish that way.  We have a lovely time on the water, but still no fish!!!  the site was good – quite a lot of children and they seemed to hang out round our van as there was wifi in the office which was just by our site.  However – this was great for us as we could make contact with everyone from home and have a good catch up.  There was a good curfew at night so was all quiet by 10pm very good.