We got a four day holiday for Easter weekend. We wanted to go somewhere far, but flights and trains to any place in Australia were costly even though we checked them as early as in January. Canberra was in our bucket list for this year, but we kept that aside as it is in a driving distance from Sydney.

As we were left with no options, we chose to drive to Canberra for the long weekend for a leisure trip. All my friends from Sydney wondered on what we will do there for four days, as it was considered to be a boring, dull city. So, we started our trip to Canberra without much expectations, just as a leisure relaxing trip.

Day1: Sydney to Canberra

We started our journey on the sunny morning of Good Friday. Much to our surprise, the four lane road was completely busy and we ended up in a jam just outside the city, all thanks to the long weekend across the country.

We found a detour with empty roads after 30mins drive and luckily got away from the jam. We loved the drive with clear blue skies and beautiful greenery and clouds.

I used to think that the wallpapers of Windows computers are mostly graphics. But, now I could understand where all these came from.

We took a small break at the Big Merino statue in Goulburn on the way. It was a huge sheep statue built as a symbol of wool industries in that area.

As we further drove towards Canberra, the landscapes looked more barren.

As we entered Canberra, we got a first glimpse of Autumn Colors of Australia this year. The roads of the city felt wide and empty compared to Sydney roads. We booked our movie tickets for a Telugu movie “Jersey” in Capitol Cinemas Manuka. So, we directly headed there after lunch.

This was our first movie experience in Australia. This theater looked very different from Indian theaters. The screen looked small and seats were not allotted. While we initially sat somewhere behind, we slowly moved to the front seats to get the feel of a bigger screen. We enjoyed the movie and then visited Lennox gardens, located beside a lake in the evening.

We expected Canberra to be cold, but the weather was very pleasant and it felt like a perfect time to visit the city.

The lake sunset from the park looked very beautiful with ducks playing around 🙂

We took our Airbnb in Wright, located on the other end of Canberra and we started immediately after sunset to find out the house before it gets dark.

Day 2: Canberra Local

Today, we decided to cover the local places of Canberra which were recommended by my friends from Sydney. Our first stop was at Cockington Green Gardens, located just outside the city.

It is a miniature park with a display of various styles of miniature buildings, set within beautifully landscaped gardens.

The first section contains famous villages and buildings of UK. I felt like Gulliver being there and kids in the park looked super thrilled with the tiny little buildings.

After the UK section, the next one is the international section, which contained famous attractions from all over the world. This part felt more interesting as we could recognize some of them. It was good fun walking along the cute little miniatures 🙂

Our next stop was Australia Parliament building. We were surprised to know that they allow tourists enter the building. Though we wished to go inside the building, we decided to go back there later, looking at the queue in front of the entrance.

Our next stop was Questacon– the National Science and Technology Centre. We were not sure on what it has for us, but we wanted to explore and see if something interests us there. It contained interactive display of all the scientific principles where one can try out and learn it on their own. We haven’t been to this kind of place anytime so far and felt fascinated by the entire concept and the models. It was a huge building with several science theme based rooms.

We stopped by in a room containing periodic table, where all the elements were placed in order, along with their actual contents, where in one can understand how an element looks like and what is its use in real world. I couldn’t stop appreciating the place enough.

The last room displayed interesting aspects about Astronomy with a huge moon replica, where people can sleep on the floor and look up to the moon displayed above.

Of course, why miss a photo with an astronaut suit :P. I felt like a kid being there.

There were a couple of galleries and war memorial in the same area, but we skipped those and headed to Mount Anslie lookout.

The Mount Ainslie lookout provided excellent views of Canberra and hills surrounding the city.

Ever since we reached Canberra, we were waiting to watch a Kangaroo, as we heard that the city is a perfect place to spot them. When we searched on google for good places to watch them, we got a suggestion of Weston Park, where in it was mentioned that Kangaroos would be seen around sunset time. Though we had an option to watch sunset from the lookout point, we chose to go the park to see them.

We reached the park by sunset, but there was a rowing event happening in a lake near the park due to which the parking was full and it was completely crowded. We managed to park our car little ahead of the park and checked for Kangaroos, but we couldn’t find any. I guess they didn’t come out looking at the crowd in the park. We felt sad to have missed them and reached our place in the night. In the night, we asked our Airbnb host about Kangaroos, for which he told us that we could find them in just a few mins walk from our place. Hoping to watch them tomorrow!

Day 3: Outside Canberra

Today morning, I woke up early and decided to walk down the road to check for Kangaroos. My husband felt little lazy to wake up early and asked me to ring him in case I could spot any 😉 I guess he was not that optimistic after our yesterday’s futile effort. That made me feel like an adventurer of the day and was more determined to find them.

Just about 10mins walk from our house, I could see a forest and a small road for cyclists in between those trees. I crossed the road to check for kangaroo and to my surprise, there were many kangaroos in that place, not only near the trees, but also outside the fence on the road. Hurrayy! That was a Eureka moment for me. The kangaroo was equally surprised to find me on the other side of the road staring at it. I quickly took some pictures and asked my husband to quickly reach the place before they go inside the trees.

Ever since we landed in Australia, my 7yr old nephew living in US, had been asking us about kangaroos. So, I did a video call, showed them to him and exactly at that moment, they started hopping and jumped into the fence from the road. Both I and my nephew both were equally excited to see them jumping around.

I loved the way I could spot them in their own territory while they were enjoying their life! My husband reached the place and luckily the Kangaroos are still outside playing with each other and clearly visible 🙂 We started our day on a really positive note!

We decided to try our luck first with parliament first and then explore the surroundings of Canberra. Even though we reached parliament close to its opening time, there was still a long queue and we thought of skipping it during this trip. We were pretty sure that we would come back to Canberra with our family or friends again and didn’t want to waste much time there.

We searched for interesting places around Canberra. The first place that interested us was Tidbinbilla, where Canberra Deep Space Network(DSN) is located, a few kms away from Canberra. It is one of the three Deep space Networks of the world, with the other two located in Florida and Spain. All the three are placed in strategic locations to cover the entire Earth. During the Apollo program, Tidbinbilla DSN was used for tracking the Apollo Lunar Module.

After Questacon visit, we really enjoyed the way museums are organized in the country. There was a mini interactive museum and space artifacts display inside the DSN complex.

The most interesting artifact was the moon rock which the Apollo mission team got from the moon. I wanted to touch it and check, but it was preserved carefully in a glass box.

Along with those, the other interesting aspect which I found there was the information about the myths around Apollo program. I heard it from many people and read many articles on how humans didn’t actually land on the moon and that it was a hoax. All those myths were clarified there in the museum with clear rationale. Along with that, there were really good documents on the spinoffs from the space technology, which are used in the real life. That felt like an interesting perspective on space research.

We were asked to switch off our mobile few kms before we entered the campus, so that our phone signals don’t cause any disturbance to receive the radio waves from the space.

After DSN visit, we drove further down to Tidbinbilla nature reserve to explore wildlife and flora of the region.

We went on a small trek route and spotted black swans 🙂

On a different trek path, we found koalas sleeping on eucalyptus trees. There were 3-4 koalas on a tree of which only one was awake and other koalas were in deep sleep. I loved the way they were sleeping and they looked very cute.

The one that was awake was busy eating the leaves. Apparently Koalas sleep 20 hours a day to maintain their metabolism. They consume only eucalypt leaves and the energy they get from those leaves is only sufficient to keep them awake for 4 hours.

On the way back from the nature reserve, we spotted couple of Emus as well. It felt amazing to spot both the national animal and the national bird of Australia on the same day 🙂

We stopped by at Mt.Stromlo observatory located on top of a hill to check if there was any observatory tour that day. But, it was closed and we found out that they have public viewing nights only once in a month, which should be planned ahead.

We had some time left in the evening, so we decided to go to National Arboretum in Canberra. It was a huge place where different varieties of trees across the world were grown.

We took a stroll in the park and relaxed there till sunset.

We went to the city to explore the night life of Canberra. The city center has a wide range of restaurants decorated with lights. We had our dinner there and headed back to our Airbnb.

Day 4: Canberra to Sydney

We started from Canberra in the morning and stopped at Bradman’s cricket museum in Bowral, a beautiful town on the way. The museum contained the history of cricket and trophies 🙂

Since I am not a cricket fan, I didn’t understand much of it, but my husband loved the place. I was more interested in fall colors of the place 😉

A beautiful trip came to an end! I was very satisfied that we got to spend good time in Canberra and could enjoy it completely. This is one of the quietest cities of the world I had visited 🙂