Melbourne, Australia

I tell you, the British Civil Service isn't a patch on the Australians. Even the French couldn't come up with as dastardly a plan as Canberra - the town with two governments.

A brief explanation of history may help your understanding at this point. There's always been rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne over which is the better city. When Australia gained independence in 1901 this extended to which would be the new capital city of the country. The solution was the ultimate compromise: build a new city halfway between the two. To make it neutral, a Territory was created so that the capital wouldn't be in New South Wales or Victoria. As a result Canberra is blessed with both a National Government and a Territorial Government. I suppose they're just lucky they escaped a Municipal Government for the city itself (the Australian Capital Territory - ACT - consists of the city and a bit of parkland around it) which would have been the ultimate bureaucratic nightmare.

Anyway... it's quite a nice city, albeit rather small compared to Sydney or Melbourne. It has about 300,000 people, which suggests that not everyone there is involved in government - at least I hope not! There's not a great deal to do, so I'm glad I didn't spend more than 3 days there. The most striking aspect of the area was the aftermath of the bush fires of January 2003 which destroyed huge amounts of the land around the city, and destroyed about 200 homes in the outer suburbs (in fact, almost all the suburbs could be described as "outer" - it's a very spread-out place). There are thousands of trees left standing like matchsticks on the hillsides after the firestorms ripped through them. There's still a nasty smell from the dead organic matter (of course, many animals also died).

The main attractions of the city are museums - there's a large military museum joined to the War Memorial, and also quite a fun science museum. The Parliament House is also open to visitors.Did that sound as if it was boring? I hope not, as Canberra is a nice city, to live in anyway. I think anyone would struggle with a two week holiday there.

Staying with friends of my parents, for once my timing was quite good: you may have celebrated Shrove Tuesday yourself this week, and I was also able to, which was nice (mmm... pancakes...). Another achievement was to eat kangaroo - I have now checked that off my mental list of Things To Do in Australia.

After a 9 hour bus ride, I arrived last night in Melbourne, which seems very big again when compared to Canberra! (It's almost the same size as Sydney: 3.5 million people.) I think I'll wait until Monday evening, when I'll nearly be leaving, to update you on what I've done so far, to make it a bit more continuous. Enjoy the weekend!

Photos are now available of the first parts of my trip (up to Sydney). Click on "photos" from the menu of my website to see them!