12 Months in Canberra

Question Time

    posted by Justin @ 10:32:00 pm

"So Felix, what do you think of Canberra?"

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Mmmmm milk

    posted by Justin @ 10:01:00 pm

Got milk?



Nope.

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Happy Birthday Felix!

    posted by Justin @ 8:04:00 pm

We got a birthday cake and candles for Felix's apartment-bound birthday. Unfortunately I did not think of the candle lighting requirements of this exercise until the last moment. One trip back to the superbarn (stupid name) and I had a box of matches.

We did the cermony under the rangehood, the concierge said the smoke detectors were kind of touchy :-)



The bananas are to preserve his modesty. Someone didn't want to get dressed again after visiting the pool :-)

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First week in Canberra

    posted by Justin @ 6:29:00 pm

Well the first week is over.

First couple of days here were fairly tourist-activity dominated. Adam was here until Tuesday morning, so we visited some local 'attractions'.

One of them was Telstra Tower. I am no stranger to Telstra Tower. I have visited it twice before this time, and in the same way as that guy in "A fish called Wanda" I declare, "DISAPPOINTED".

First up, on the ground floor there used to be in interesting display of past telephony technology. Including one of the old analog talking clock machines. Now, it's all gone. There is no sign saying "exhibit temporarily unavailable" or anything. Now you walk through a large empty room to get to the entry!

Secondly, on the enclosed viewing platform level, above each pane of glass there used to be a picture taken from the same viewpoint with points of interest labelled, so you knew what you were looking at. All gone. The only concession to reference points now is the 4 points of the compass are labelled. Yay.

Thirdly, the coffee shop is closed. But they have coffee facilities on the viewing level. But twenty fucking dollars for 2 coffees and 2 iced chocolates? I don't think so Tim.

Still, Telstra haven't found a way to screw up the view:



Speaking of views, here is the fabulous view from our second floor apartment:



We also visited Questacon while Adam was here. I bought a year membership, as we will be back many times this year (indeed we have been there twice in one week. So far.)

Here are some pictures from Questacon:

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Well here we are

    posted by Justin @ 10:08:00 pm

Well we made it, to the Waldorf in the bustling (not) city of Canberra.

'They' say that getting there is half the fun. 'They' should be killed, but slowly.

A few comments:

• Canberra is small
  
• It's easy to get around, roads and public transport are good
  
• There is not much here
  
• Rent is very expensive
  
• Moving is very expensive
  
• Replacement airconditioner compressors for my car are very expensive
  

Notice how the entire tone of this blog is already at rock bottom? It can only get better from here right? :-)

I'm being unfair, I will admit it. Uprooted, moved out of my comfort zone and all that. I'm entitled to a few whinge posts right?

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The drive over - day 2

    posted by Justin @ 11:14:00 pm

Well after a decent sleep in (about 10am) we stirred and started moving out.

The nice lady who owned the motel had tried a few mechanics, but no luck. It was saturday after all. In country Victoria.

We decided to press our luck and power on.

Heading out of Swan Hill, we found that the storm had been fairly serious. Numerous downed power poles were on the side of the road. Like this one:



Since we'd made approximately a 100k detour southward to reach Swan Hill, we (Adam) decided to take the 'back roads' through to our destination. Unfortunately, while our map said our chosen route was all sealed, reality differed.

In the end I decided just to head north back to the Hume. About 1km before we hit the highway, the aircon conked out completely. "Uh oh" I thought. I pulled over to check - smoke coming out from the bonnet!

Luckily again, this time we were outside a phone box and shop. Adam had some lunch, I had a Callippo. This time we were waiting for the NRMA. While on the phone to the slightly hostile sounding NRMA lady, she informed me that my membership number was invalid. No shit, I just signed up last night! She conferenced in the RAA lady, who told me that the database only gets updated every 2 days, so I won't have appeared on their records. At this stage I'm starting to think that I'm going to have to put down roots in Collins Gullie, the RAA lady on the phone recognises me from the previous night, and tells the NRMA that it's OK to service me. Thanks Sharon!!!!

NRMA took ages to come out. Finally a truck cruises past on the other side of the highway, and stops about 300 metres away at some other poor bastard with a broken car. He fixes that (I think he just had to confirm it was a tow truck job) and comes back our way. Surely it's our turn, but noooo he was gonna drive right by. Luckily Adam flagged him down, and although we were pegged for some other driver, he decides to help us out (Country folk are nice).

He takes a quick look, pulls out a blade, cuts the fan belt to the compressor and tells me to watch the steering. And away he goes.

In retrospect, I should have realised that the burning was just the belt rubbing on the siezed fan belt. Probably best to be cut though, instead of just rubbing away and loading the engine.

So the last 300 km of the journey were done without air conditioner and without power steering. It was about 38 degrees that day. It was uncomfortable at first, but the worst was to come, hitting the city streets without power steering on a car that has power steering is very very nasty. You fight the normal tire friction, and the dead power steering, on every corner.

Eventually though, we made it.

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The drive over - day 1

    posted by Justin @ 10:44:00 pm

As promised, here is some detail on Adam and I's fun-filled journey from Adelaide.

We left the fabled Adelaide Hills behind us at roughly 11am. Since my breakfast that day had consisted of a Mint Slice (hey - they house was empty) I decided to get some nutritious calories into me and had the McDonalds Big Breakfast. Disgusting. After this experience I would not eat McDonalds again for 500km.

We chose to stop at Swan Hill, as being a relatively close target (given our late start to the day) and somewhere I had at least been before. I knew it wasn't terrible. Vodafone 123 gave us some motel names, and I chose the one I had visited 12 months earlier.

At the Blanchtown Bridge we found this neat statue:



And some tasteless advertising from our authorities:



Uploading pictures on dialup is awful!

On the last 50 kilometres of our journey into Swan Hill we encountered a fairly impressive storm - a massive dust cloud swung over our heads and we were treated to an impressive lightning display. Not too much wind from where we were. I was thinking it was a fairly small storm by country standards - we would find out it was perhaps not the day after.



As we pulled into Swan Hill though, slowing down to 60kph for the first time in a while, I heard something bad. It was a nasty nasty grinding noise - coming from the bonnet of my car! Eek!

Stopping outside the local pizza bar, I was worried to notice that the pitch of the nasty noise was directly related to engine speed - not road speed. Not good at all! Switching the engine off I pulled out my trusty RAA card and called the RCVA.

Speedbump #2 - my RAA membership had expired. Somehow I had neglected to renew it. Shit! $158 later, I was a member in good standing again, and the RCVA agreed to come out and look at my car.

One Hamburger later, we greeted the friendly RCVA man. Adam assures me he was not good looking. His diagnosis was a mixed blessing - it was just the aircon compressor, but since it's connected to the engine always, it couldn't easily by disconnected. Leaving it connected meant we would risk it seizing up. Cutting the belt completely would mean no power steering.

We found our accomodation and drove my extremely ill sounding car in.

Deciding to drown our sorrows we headed down to the local.

Crazy vics, they have these glasses called 'Pots'. So you get a pot of Pale. At least it was on top. A pot is small but cheap. 6 pots each later we found the quiet front bar had been transformed into a karaoke bar.

There was a woman who was part of the Karaoke setup, who did a few songs, I guess to get people warmed up. Then the locals started - and goddam, it sure looked like the highlight of their week. On the plus side, they weren't awful singers.

Stumbling back to our room we decided to forgoe the early start to see if we could find a local mechanic.

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