Wanderung 33

Canberra Day 2

Somewhat jet lagged, we slept in as Jeffie went to work, which most under-60s have to do of course, and then had a relaxed breakfast. Karen picked us up around 10 o`clock and we had a grand tour of Canberra and areas a bit South of town.

First we drove up to a reconstructed observatory on top of one of the small mountains outside Canberra to the West. The observatory had been burnt down in a severe wild fire back in the 1960s. Karen said that literally hundreds of homes had also been lost in that wildfire.

Continuing over a ridge of the mountains on the western side of Canberra, we drove to radio telescope arrangement in the Tidbinbilla Valley. That is the Deep Space Communication Complex, and the array of radio telescopes was used for communication and tracking satellites as well as some radio astronomy, I gathered. The center was a joint work between the Australians, NASA and JPL in the US, and there was a small but very nice space museum in the Visitor Centre that had NASA exhibits including space suits, a Mars rover, and fascinating stuff like that. So we looked at some of those exhibits before rambling on down Highway 5.

Not too far down the highway was the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, which is a wonderful drive-through or walk-through type of open-range nature reserve, similar to the Safari Park we had ridden our bicycles through in Denmark in Wanderung 30, but filled with the native animals of Australia, instead. That just fascinated us as visitors, although I suspect it is pretty old hat to most Australians.

We took the loop drive, which featured kangaroos right off the bat, including one guy who was using his arms to scratch his tummy, which Karen said she had never seen before, and several mothers with young joeys either in the pouch or walking around beside them.

We stopped once to take a loop walk that led around a enclosure which featured koalas, and that turned out to be a unique experience. The koalas were there, of course, as advertised, and we saw what appeared to be a family grouping of parents plus one child and one baby koala. Very cute!

But what made the short, 700-meter walk memorable was the eucalyptus smell that wafted to us on the forest path. Apparently it had rained the night before and that causes the eucalyptus trees to exude or emit their characteristic aroma, which I have simply never smelled in nature before. That is like the smell of eucalyptus cough drops, but lighter and more natural and very different from the pine woods smell we sometimes get while walking in pine forests in our part of the world.

Coming back I think I saw a wombat waddling around in an enclosure beside the trail, but Monika thought it was a mini-kangaroo of some kind. Of course, if that animal really was a Quokka from the Western coast area of Australia, which is probably the case, then we were both wrong! Part of the joy of touring Australia is playing "Name That Animal!" as you drive around and encounter the wildlife.

Karen took us for lunch at a very nice restaurant where, of course, she knew the chef. I tried a dish featuring a Greek cheese I had never heard of, called houmali, because I like feta cheese but it is pretty strong and Karen assured me this was like a milder version of that.

As it turned out, the chef had prepared the cheese on a kind of flatbread with a granular type of salad on top. It was completely new to me, but the medley of that unique cheese flavor together with the chunky texture of the salad and bread, made my mind think it was eating steak! So surprising! And useful to know good food can satisfy some basic cravings if I ever decide to go vegetarian. And the more I see examples of "food" animals exhibiting intelligent, sophisticated behavior, the more difficult it becomes for me to eat them!

After lunch, we were all surprisingly tired and the rain was closing in, which prevented us from taking Karen`s dogs to the dog park, so she dropped us off at Jeffie`s and I ended up taking a 2-hour nap. Later that afternoon we tried to get another of those thin supplemental batteries for our iPads at the nearest Aldi, but had no luck. So we just settled in for the evening checking on the news and for my part, catching up with my trip journal.

Karen picked us back up that evening for a nice, comfortable meal of pho at a neighborhood Vietnamese restaurant, and she also had them fix a take-out meal for Jeffie. We arrived back right around the same time as Jeffie, who works very long days, and chatted away after the evening news. Having Jeffie in the conversation was quite interesting as she had an incisive view on aspects of Australian culture and politics, partly because Jeffie is politically attuned and partly due to her work in a government agency. She provided valuable insights on several topics I had been curious about such as women's push for work equity in Australia and so forth. But we finally had to call it quits around 10 and all turn in for the night.