A Bird's Eye View

We drove 6 hours today into Canberra, Australia's capital city. When Melbourne and Sydney fought over who should actually be the capital, the compromise was to make it in Canberra. We were told in Melbourne though that they secretly still didn't like that because Canberra is closer to Sydney than to them. I think we all would just like to ignore D.C. right about now, so maybe they could just do that as well.

Our drive was pretty darn boring. Once you get on a highway here, that's all you see. Even when you see an exit that names a city, you sure don't see it anywhere. All you see is this

Notice the difference in these two locations? Yea, we didn't either..........

Once we got to Canberra, we noticed that everything was green again. Turned out it was very pretty after all.

Needing some exercise after that long drive, we decided to go check out the Mount Ainslie Lookout. Sooooooooo we climbed a 2,766 feet elevation (what? we didn't learn our lesson in New Zealand??) to a beautiful view of the city. 

Along the path we saw some interesting things. Look at this knobby tree. Never saw anything like it.

And we see these birds everywhere. They're probably like our pigeons (and we wouldn't know), but they're much prettier!

Sure wish there was a way to get a picture of something we saw all day long here. Lots, and I do mean lots, of wild cockatoos flying through the trees! We're now able to pick out their sounds and then immediately look up! Sorry, Kelli, still can't bring one home.

BUT the BEST thing we saw on our little hike today was this

We were this close, no telephoto lens here! It just stood there and watched us. There were about 10 hopping around, traveling in groups of 3 or 4. When they saw us, they stand up tall, probably to display their full size to us in defense.

I'm sure by now you have noticed I kind of have an obsession with kangaroos. Not so much an obsession, but more of a wonderment and awe. I love seeing things I don't get to see in the U.S. Kangaroo here are probably a lot like our deer. They probably totally annoy the locals. These guys were in a park right across the street from a residential area. Wonder if they eat their plants too?