Day 301 - Thursday 26 October - Canberra

Day 301 – Wildcats 105 V Illawarra 74- A good win for their Breast Cancer fundraiser game

Thursday

26 October – Began “The Man of My Dreams” by Curtis Sittenfeld . This is another book I picked up at a caravan park swap. I am not sure about the title but the blurb and reviews seem to indicate it might have more substance.

Sutton – Canberra

A thunderstorm has set in this early evening. The sky is slate grey punctuated by bright flashes. I am sitting on the computer going through the photos and blog as Paul sleeps. Every now and then flash catches me off guard with how close it is and not long after booming thunder rocks the van. I have unplugged the electronics for fear of a surge. It has kept all the school kids indoors and us too, no putt putt play off tonight. I need to walk as there opportunity for exercise was limited today. It isn’t going to happen.

Anyway, back to the start of the day…

The wind had whipped up a bit during the night and Paul brought the awning in to save it from any damage. When morning arrived, it was quite dark and gloomy which disguised the lateness. I read for half an hour and then got out at 8.20am, going for my shower before returning for breakfast.

We packed ourselves into the car at 9.30am and made our way to the National Museum, paid for parking once again and walked up to the interestingly designed outer shell. There is a ribbon of steel that snakes its way from the building towards the lake, to me it is a waste and they should have created a roller coaster. From viewing points around the lake the building looks like it has a large orange handle to move it about.

We entered and were immediately bombarded by kids as you would expect. After collecting a map we wandered around the various exhibits. An old FJ Holden towing a 50’s style caravan sits proudly in the middle of the reception gallery, along with the complete skeleton of the muttabuttasaurs.

We entered the specimen section, where dissected bits of animals were interred in jars of goop, this had the school girls crying, “I can’t look” or “It’s so cruel” and the boys wanting more. We had a giggle between us at the carry on.

There was an extensive section on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture that was quite interesting. There was even a display on Broome radio and we sat and watched a short doco as one of the speakers was Stephen Pigrim, a friend of Paul’s from when he worked in the area in the 80’s.

We made our way through the Australian English heritage section and the connections made between our country and European nations, this lead into a display on Australian life with various places of interest around Australia. WA was represented by a Rottnest Island display.

Aware of the time, we needed to race through what we were seeing, so that we could return to the car for 11.30am when the ticket ran out. It was nowhere near enough time to check out all of the exhibits, but I could tell Paul was over the kids and the noise.

We drove across town to Fyshwick, where we were going to check out Capital Brewing. Once we had located it and seeing we still had 20min before opening, we decided to go to Plonk bottle shop and check the range of craft brews they had on hand.  Paul was able to pick up the Pact Brewing range to try seeing they don’t have a cellar door and a couple of others.

We returned to Capital and met Dan, who was eager to talk to us about the brewery that has only been open 6 weeks. They have a permanent food truck in the premises that has a cult following in Canberra called Brod and we were treated to burgers and fries for lunch while Paul drank the beers and Dan did the talking.

We were shown around the brewery space before returning to finish the chips and beers. Unfortunately we were on a tight schedule and we needed to be out of Capital and heading back across town. So after Paul skolled his last few tasters, we said goodbye and made our way towards central Canberra.

We were told to park in the loading zone and then walked into Wig and Pen Brewery to meet Andy, one of the We Love Craft Beer members and the brewer Alan. Once again we sat about chatting as Paul tried the beers. We relayed our holiday stories and the breweries we had visited during our travels.

Andy didn’t hang around for long as he had to get to work, so we were left with Alan, who took us through the small brewery and then poured more tasters for Paul to try. It was 4.30pm before we finally managed to tear ourselves away and join the after work commuters on the drive home.

The sky had turned all shades of grey and rain was just starting to spit as we travelled back to the van, finally getting in at 5pm. I got straight into the photos while Paul took himself to bed for a nap. I sat against the window watching the afternoon go dark and listened to the rain get heavier, pinging off the roof and drizzling down the windows. There was something soothing about it really except when a flash spiked down a little close for comfort.

By 7pm, I was ready to think about dinner and so I heated up some soup for us, as we were still full from our lunchtime burgers. After dinner, I fiddled around on the computer before deciding to head to bed and read.