The Nation's Capitol

Ok ... dear Canberra, you certainly are more lush and green (when there is enough rain) than Melbourne, and your stately buildings rise above the foliage in all their arctosian bauhaus glory as peaens to bureacratic diplomacy, but more importantly you hold something closer and dearer to my heart ... a very good friend.

 View of Black mountain from hotel room

I spent 2 rather wet days soaking in the sites of our nation's capitol. I was stuck amongst an all girls grade school gymnastics team on the plane ... thank god the flight was short ... we seemed to have taken off, and then we were preparing to land with hardly time to finish a bottle of water. There was time enough for countless lolly swops and nintendo ds convos. When we were landing one girl piped up "keep chewing, keep chewing!!" which cracked the rest of the troupe up ... must have been an in joke.

Anyhoo with an hour to iron shirts and freshen up, DC & J kindly picked me up and took me on a brief sojourn through Canberra's highlights, before returning to their gorgeous apartment for drink and conversation. As always, D's taste remains impeccable and it was great to catch up on all the goss.

The evening ended in food, drink and laughter over at the Manse (i.e. D's sister M's house) where I learnt how terribly small the Canberra social set is, this is 6 degrees of separation in action, and where I chuckled quietly that a rave in Canberra could end at 11pm and that 10000 is a whopping great attendance number.

The Manse

Pigging out!

It was all business on Monday but the charming ladies at the National gallery took us on a brief tour and boy what a gallery!! I must come back and view it all in detail. And James Turrell's Skyspace will be on the top of the list.

D, if you are reading this ... thank you soooo much. I really had the best time.