A continuation of the holiday

Well ... here we go. We start off in Canberra, but (without getting lost) quickly head off towards Yass. There's not much to see in Yass, but the countryside is stunning. Our first stop was in Boorowa (or someplace similar). We went to a small cafe with a very friendly owner (who had lots of photos of Outer Mongolia up on the wall) to warm ourselves up on coffee and hot chocolates.

The first major stop on our trip (after driving through Cowra - which is interesting because it was a POW camp in the second World war and had the largest breakout in modern military history in which 231 Japanese soldiers died. It now has the largest Japanese Garden in the Southern Hemisphere and the town slogan is the "World's friendliest town" or something similar) was a few hours later when we arrived in Canowindra (pronounced Canaundra).

What a place! Canowindra is rather small, but has one of the best museums that I've been in. The "age of fishes" museum should be World famous. Unfortunately it isn't. We were welcomed at the gate as if we were the first visitors in a very long time! The museum is close to where an ancient billabong dried up (about 360 million years ago) leaving thousands upon thousands of dead fish. What a view into life in the Devonian era. The museum was brilliantly set-out. I came away imaging the river flowing past, the billabong slowly drying and the armoured fish swimming around ...

After lunch in a rather interesting pub where Jonathan may well have got food poisoning in the "Beerandbullshit corner" and they had a copy of the notice for a 4000 pound reward for the capture of "John Gilbert, John O'Mealley, Benjamin Hall and John Vane", we headed off towards Parkes.

We checked in at the Spanish Lantern motel before heading straight up to the telescope.

More to come ...