NSW Road Trip, Easter WeekendThe first chapter of my new job came to an end on Thursday evening, and with it came the excitement and anticipation of a road trip out of Sydney. Since my return to Australia last Ocotber I've only managed to get out of the city a couple of times. It was time to do what no one had recommended yet I felt it somewhere near neccessary to do - that is to visit the nations oddly nominated capital city - Canberra.
Unlike Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra is, well very unlike Sydney and Melbourne - both great cities in their own right. Canberra is located
nowhere near the coast and didn't really seem to have any significant waterway entering it like the majority of capitals around the world today. It's really less than a hundred years old and as such doesn't really have a great deal of history to offer. The general feel I got of the place was of another city with big aspirations just waiting for it's populus to catch up.
Regardless, on arrival, we set about having a good time and went to check out one of the main tourist pulls of the area - The Australian Parliament Building. The city itself is quite interestingly laid out and at times it really seems like a large town built in the middle of a park. Nice...ish, but I certainly wouldn't wanna spend too long here.
After grabbing some dinner, it was time to make best of the 'nightlife' which sadly took a beating from it's regular form as it was Good Friday. A trusty Irish bar was however open for more hours than any of us would be able to utilise so our venue was pretty much set for the night.
We bombed out and returned to our hostel, significant for being Mr Burgess' first time in one, and for me - the first time in one since my time in California last year. A pretty good clean one I must say, it even had a pool which got a dip the following morning. We had a browse around some of the city stores before saddling up and waving goodbye to Canberra, the capital of Australia.
We left after some dodgy McDonalds breakfast made us all feel about 28% worse than before eating and as such wouldn't take too long to need something else to eat. We reached Cooma - the 'capital of the Snowy Mountains'. We stopped in at a pub where they had a couple of pool tables and the Eng Vs Aus rivalry continued. A strange moment passed over me however, which Craig could also appreciate. As many pubs televise sports coverage, this one was no different. On one screen, there was Horse Racing live from Randwick race course - which is now just around the corner from where I'm living. Another screen across the room was airing the Essex Championship derby match between Southend and Colchester - being played not far from home in England.
We moved on from Cooma and soon found the landscape changing. After the initial mountainous surrounds had passed, some wide open lush, green, sweeping fields filled our view. I had to stop to get a few pictures in what we all thought was a pr
etty incredible looking area. Thousands of round boulders were strewn across the landscape - with no apparant reason. We took this in for a while before making a few more impomptu stops as we finally reached our destination; Kosciusko National Park; Jindabyne.
This was my second visit to Jindabyne, the last time however was a very brief thru-trip on the way to Thredbo and Perisher last July.
Today the sun was shining, the air was fresh and the vibe was really cool about town. We secured a room for the night before heading out with a newly purchased boomerang. Many failed attempts and we were finally catching the returning 'rang.
This evening was way more fun than Canberra, with us sinking more change than I can remember into the pool tables and queuing up the pubs video dukebox with some absolute hum-dinging classic music videos.
The morning I've been waiting for for years arrived. I awoke way earlier than the other guys like many kids would have on this particular Sunday, except they'd be expecting to see the Easter Bunnies eggs. I was going wakeboarding. Sweeter than chocolate.
This was something the three of us had organised, but in a freakish twist of fate, Craig awoke with the worst cramp of his life and left the wakeboarding trio as a duo. So down at Lake Jindabyne Aaron and I got our wetsuits on and boarded the boat. Marty gave us a bunch of instruction on how we were to get ourselves out of the water and upright... obviously before we even thought about being dragged at speed behind a speedboat.
First in the mountain lakes waters, I was surprised at how warm the water was. So without that to worry about, the rope tightened, I slowly moved forward, rising out of the water like a phoenix... and then in a flash, falling straight on my face back beneath the surface.
Take 2, and I was up and out. Having a good snowboarding background seemed to help and I was soon weaving around from left to right and having the best fun I've had all year. As I was cruising along, I was starting to get tired, and all of a sudden I caught the toe-side edge and my forearms slapped the glassy surface hard.
Aaron jumped into the bindings and went through a similar learning curve. A couple of equally impressive stacks before losing the board from his feet and clamboring back on board marking half time of the session.
Our driver and instructor reckoned that the conditions we had were nearly as good as we could have wished for, with many areas of the lake perfectly calm.
I had just about mastered being upright when Marty decided to give me a real thrill by turning fast and hard thus swinging me out at speed with a heap of g-force which put the size of my grin off the edges of my face. There was no way I was going to better this feeling today.
After the fun of the lake, it was time to hit the long road home and back to Sydney. With a little exception. It was Easter Rodeo day!
In we went, lookin' like real city slickers in amongst the country cowboys and cowgirls. We watched as the lassooin', Steer catchin' and Rodeo Clownin' before running low on interest... over 400kms back to Sydney... went a little quicker than I thought it might. With a whole days true rest to recover before returning back to work, I was very much satisfied to have gotten away from everything for a great little break.
Happy Easter!
Easter Show, NSW
With Sunday, I finally got to get a weekend stop at an awesome book store in the city called KinoKinuya, Japanese and packed with just about everything you could ask for from a printed media store. I picked up a couple of titles and then after some O'Portos for lunch, we headed out to the Easter Show at HomeBush.
We checked out most of that stuff, and ended the evening around the brightly lit thrill rides. We hit up the RollerCoaster and felt shaken but not too stirred, then smashed the hell out of all and sundry on the bumper cars and then finally went big (ish) and went on some crazy upside-downy, twisty turny ride... which was fun for about 60seconds, before we realised lunch was on its way back with a vengeance. 
