Canberra: It's a capital, it's beautiful and it's empty

The drive up to Canberra from the coast is through the Great Dividing Range, going from sea level through wooded mountains, and even high rain forests. Lots of very twisty well-maintained roads, which is good fun for the driver, less fun for the passengers. We stopped at a little town called Braidwood for lunch, where we had some quintessentially Australian experiences. First, the town appeared to be just one main street, the continuation of the highway. This was wider than some English villages, and the buildings were of the wild west persuasion, with delightful verandas.

Then we discovered an olde fashioned sweet-shop, with hundreds of jars of sweets that seemed to have disappeared - does anyone else remember Blackjacks? Georgia and Ethan behaved like, well, like kids in a sweet-shop, and stocked up on confectionary and bought Cyrus a birthday goody bag. Across the road was the pie shop, selling award winning pies, which it seemed everyone in town was coling to buy. So we sat and ate pies for lunch, bacon and cheese in gravy, curry, and steak. Everything contributed to the feel of a town stuck in some fifties time-warp. I'm sure that behind the lace curtains they all have plasma TVs and Internet connections, and are up with all the latest fashions, but it hasn't made an impact on main street.

We continued along the highway to Canberra, past the surprisingly high numbers of very large road kill. We saw kangaroos of course, but also wombats and what seemed to be a bear. I suppose the putrifying corpses is another good reason for air-con and keeping the windows closed.

The Medina apartment in Canberra had two large bedrooms and a reasonably equipped kitchen, so we planned to cook most of meals at in the apartment. Nigel and Chris were in town visiting rellies (that's what the Aussies say, although it seems a strange spelling), so the children were keen to hook up with Ollie and Cyrus, their two boys. And it all worked out as a most excellent week. We saw

• National Museum of Australia
• Telstra Tower
• Old Parliament House
• The Diplomatic Quarter
• New Parliament House
• Questacon
• War Memorial
• Captain Cook Memorial Fountain by pedalo

We also went swimming with the various Larcombes at the art deco classic lido in Canberra, had a great day at Nigel's cousin Sandy's house up in the hills, and finally went to our first BBQ, hosted by Sandy and Caz at their house. Even though they didn't know us, Sandy and Caz extended great hospitality to us, letting us stay overnight after we were turfed out of the apartments, endured my drunken explanations of how reputation systems will let me walk into their house and control their appliances and not even complaining when Ethan was copiously sick the next day. We are eternally grateful to these wonderful people.

We enjoyed Canberra immensely. A lot of money has been invested producing well designed attractions, and there is a well-heeled feel about the town, coming from servicing the needs of the politicos and influence operators. However, it seemed sometimes as though we were the only people looking at these great attractions, and driving on the streets was surreal - this was the nation's capital, but nobody was going anywhere. Its very different from Sydney.