Personal admin in army terms is a euphemism for a bit of shut-eye. But we need to do a bit more than this after some four days on the road. We’re in Canberra at Cotter campground for two nights. At night its chilly! Its valley location is a sink hole for all the cold air rolling off the surrounding hills. Guy buys a blanket and I persuade others to get me a beanie.
But copious hot water in showers and sinks gives the chance to wash clean the grime of four days travel.
After we’ve tweaked the antenna’s power cable Guy reads the paper, James, impervious to cold, takes a dip in the Cotter River and John and I potter off to the Australian War Memorial.
Beautifully finished in marble and wood, it is sobering and well worth the trip. The First World War dominates our visit. Superbly detailed dioramas illustrate the mud, grim conditions and sacrifice of so many. Of interest to us, of course, is the record of the early tanks. Wreckage recovered from a battlefield. Images captured in paint.
We linger in the VC Hall of Valour. Many from Gallipoli, more from the Western Front in France. And, of course, those from more recent conflicts. Malaya, Vietnam, Afghanistan. We understand. We are all soldiers here. Once you have been one, you’re never not.
Our other mission in Canberra is food. We head off to Coles, Canberra Civic. Bad idea. Canberra centre is full of people and cars and the carpark height won’t fit us. John enjoys turning the Land Rover with no power steering round on a postage stamp while I supervise. We head off to a suburb to complete the task. When we get there, trolleys need a coin. The local bank refuses to change John’s notes as he doesn’t bank with them. AusPost solves the problem.
Heading back to camp, we pass Canberra Turf. ‘Grows faster than the cost of living!’ says the sign.
Then fields of cattle. Someone is advertising their breeding stock. The contact number, appropriately, is for ‘Rodger’.
Later, a warning sign for a very large hamster.
Back at camp Guy once again is preparing steaks on the campsite’s free electric barbeque. Apparently, they don’t have them in UK. (Australia: 1, UK: Nil; but this isn’t a competition, of course!) The steak and potato salad follow his Michelin 1-star dhal. Mouthwatering, but it resulted, for one, in a long running tail. Some questions are best left unasked.
Campsite strip away the fallacies of modern life, someone said. The men at adjacent sites fiddle with kit and tools. The women do the laundry and washing up. Rachel, from Liverpool via Sydney, latches on to the English accents and comes to swap stories.
The four teenage girls in the next-door site embarrass us by not only starting a fire with wet wood, illegally nicked from the nearby wood-line, but also rekindling it in the morning fog.
We slink away to try our luck elsewhere.
We have the luck and luxury to do this. That’s not so for everybody and that’s the reason for this blog. So please help spread the message about the charities we’re supporting by sharing the link or our gofundme page and help the contributions to keep coming in. Every little helps.
For the benefit of the non-Oz readers of Mike’s marvellous blog, I’d just like to point out that any connection between Australia’s forecast 2025/26 $41B budget deficit, and the need to insert a $1 coin to use a shopping trolley in Canberra (the seat of Australia’s Federal Government) is a scurrilous rumour, and clearly factually inaccurate.
Australia does not have enough shopping trolleys for that to work!
Thoroughly enjoying the tremendous travelogue!