Thursday, November 8

We were up and out the door by 0545 to get Shaun to SYD for his flight to Hong Kong.  He was on reserve for today, and got a call.  It took a bit of logistical planning, but since we were going that general direction anyway, it worked well for us to keep the car for the trip to Canberra.  We did a bit of a scenic route going down to Woolongong, then over a very twisty MacQuarrie Pass up to the southern highlands.

Curious crimson rosella.

Twisty MacQuarrie Pass.

We stopped at a very big giant potato on the side of the road in Robertson.

We seem to be in ranchland, with lots of cows, horses and sheep. Mmmm.... lamb!

Around 11, we arrived at Goulburn to the home of JP and Carolyn.

 

JP was a Fly-Baby builder when he lived in Darwin (we almost connected with him there in 2005), but he sold his project to Mick in Canberra. We had a lovely visit, and JP was a great tour guide for our drive into Canberra. He even took us to the 'Big Merino', a giant, anatomically correct cement sheep. Pictures are on Facebook.  Sheep farming is big here.

We went past a big giant lake, Lake George, that has been dry but is coming back.  Lots of wind turbines along it.  When you drive along it, the GPS shows it as a lake, but I bet it's a kilometer or two before you actually hit water.  There are lots of cows and sheep grazing 'in the lake'.  JP told us that there is a myth that ties this lake to one in NZ.  When that lake is low or dry, this one is full.  When this one is low or dry, that one is full.

JP guided us around Canberra and described some of the sights to us. The Parlament House is really striking! Then we went off to Chiefly to meet up with Mick the Fly-Baby owner. Here is Drew's narration: We enjoyed a cuppa and spent several hours talking aeroplanes before JPs family picked him up for his return home. In the four hours we spent with JP, we met up as acquaintences and left as friends.  Mick and I then spent a further hour discussing some of the finer technical details of building, maintaining and flying a Fly-Baby.  We departed with mutual invitations for the next time that either of us are in each other's cities and made arrangements to keep in touch.  These fellows were wonderful hosts.  The Fly-Baby community is second to none!

We checked into the hostel and got dinner at a nearby restaurant that JP recommended... Digress.  Indian/Italian fusion, and pretty darn good!  I called Angela to make plans with her for the next day, and then we were off to bed.

Excuse the typos and the inconsistency... this isn't the easiest thing to do on flaky connections and on my tablet.  I think we will be doing most of our trip updates on Facebook from now on!  The only time we can get consistently good internet is at the Demmitt's.  We didn't bring the laptop, and now we realize that we can't upload our camera photos onto the tablet unless we e-mail them to ourselves as attachments and then save them... blah.  Facebook is much, much easier.  Sorry, Randy... you will have to go onto FB!