A change of plan.

So...because the South Coast has had record breaking rainfall yesterday we are no longer heading to the coast today. We are heading further inland to hopefully drier climes to a place called Wee Jasper.....who named these places?There may be no phone signal where we are going so this maybe the last you hear of me until Thursday night. Adieu.

Pod Play.

So.....a planned trip to the cinema to see 'The Good Dinosaur' was cancelled after Phoebe decided it might be too scary for her. We returned to the National Arboretum to try the Pod Play area that we had not had time to do on our last visit.We then drove to Belconnen for shopping for our camping trip. We drove all around the car park looking for  space and eventually found one just as we were losing the will to live.We got all we needed at the supermarket but then had to queue for ages at the till as there were only two open and the one we were at was manned by a fellow who looked 97 who was tapping the till screen as if he had never seen one before. To say he was miserable is an understatement.It practically rained all day and the weather forecast is for more of the same....Oh Joy!

To Canberra.

ACT.

So....we are arrived in the Australian Capital Territory.We woke at 6 ish and were off before 7, passing more huge open cast coal mines that were just horrible scars on the countryside.We called in at Singleton for petrol and a small detour to see the World's largest sun dial before taking the Putty Road to Windsor.We had breakfast deep in the forest at an old derelict truckstop with a huge stainless steel statue called Wo - Man....it was half man, half woman. It's sculptor was selling BBQ breakfast rolls to passing travellers. What an interesting fellow and place! ( I will post pictures when I can.)From Windsor we went through Penrith and along the old Hume Highway as long as we could before finally succumbing to the heavy on the (new) Hume Highway.We had some lunch in Goulburn and carried on past an empty Lake George. We arrived in Canberra at about 2 ish.Phoebe hasintriduced us to many of her Christmas and birthday presents and shown us pictures of her trip to Malaysia. We went out for a walk in the early evening and she impressed us with her gymnastics routine... But I was able to stun her with my teddy bear roll!We are having a day in Canberra tomorrow before heading off with Phoebe to the coast for a few nights camping. We will be back Thursday and on Friday we are having a tour of the Australian Parliament building....but not one that the general public gets....Tracy's sister Maria works in Parliament so we are getting a behind the scenes tour. Exciting!Now bed....we both hardly slept without pillows last night in our Aldi tent in Jerrys Plains ....so we are keen to abed.

'In tent' on reaching Jerrys Plains.

So....we set off for Canberra about 11 ish after completely messing up our new lounge area by filling it with the bed so that I could paint the floor in the bedroom area. It was a good chance to do it as the paint is so fumy!We headed south via Tenterfield, Glen Innes, Guyra, Armidale, Tamworth and Muswellbrook, passing strange places like Mother of Ducks Lagoon, Tilbuster Ponds, Willgoose Rd, Beardy Waters, Bolivia, Aberdeen, Llangothlen and Moonbi. We stopped at Moonbi Lookout to look out across the Upper Hunter Valley, a big (race)horse breeding area. We passed 'Burning Mountain'....a hill with a coal seam about 100 ft below the surface that has been on fire, according to scientists, for the last 6000 years! It moves southwards a metre a year. I want to call and see it on the way back.We are nearly half way to Canberra, about 2 hours from Sydney camped in a place called Jerrys Plains...no it doesn't have an apostrophe....We are in our new £30 4 man tent from Aldi....with a damn mosquito that has already feasted upon my left buttock! (Will has just killed it and now there is a smear of buttock blood on our new tent wall!)We had our tea in the Jerrys Plains Tavern...a man haunt....no wives seem to venture there...but to be honest the men that haunted it probably don't have wives... I doubt any woman would be stupid enough to tie themselves to any of the men there.Will reckons they are all probably lesbians anyway.We had two T-bone steaks."Do you want any sauce with those?" Asked the barman."Oh, what sauces do you have?" Asked Will, expecting ' mushroom' 'peppercorn' or 'Diane.'"Gravy," said the barman.To be fair the steaks were huge if a little gristly but the chips were great and they were only £10 each.Rain is expected...I hope this Aldi tent is waterproof.... Oh, and we forgot pillows so I am going to have to sleep on a 'hard' pillow of my clothes and a towel.It just goes to show that life in Australia is not all beaches and sun...it can be quite challenging.