Canberra Catchup - Highest Mountain in Australia

April 22nd - 26th 2012
I was lucky to catch up with Jo when she was over in Perth for her wedding last year, but it had been years since I'd seen Enzo so to spend some time with this beautiful couple was going to be special.

Collected from the airport, boy have I been flying a lot lately. In the past 3 weeks I've flown Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Vancouver, San Fran, LA, Melbourne, Perth,  Karratha, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra.  Here I was only my second time in Canberra and with Jo and Enz.

We had a choice climbing or hiking to the top of Australia. I had always wanted to tick off the easiest of the highest points in the 8 countries in the world so though perhaps climbing I should have chosen, hiking we did.  The weather was well errr um less than ideal, windy and a white out but we still went and stood on the top of Australia. Plenty of time to catch up on the drive and a delicious breakfast stop along the way.  We finished the day with a laksa to warm up.

View from top of Mt Ainsley

Enzo had to head to work, away in P&G so the rest of the week would be Jo and Lisa time. I spent the Monday with Enz we squeezed in a quick hike to the top of Mt Ainslie before taking him to the airport.  I had visited the war memorial last time I was here so this time I headed to the museums and art galleries while Jo was at work.

  I changed my flight home to spend more time with Jo and as we've both always wanted to go to the dawn ANZAC service at the war memorial here in Canberra (April 25th).  As implied it was an dark early start, cool as Canberra is we rugged up and walked with the thousands of others. We stood in silence and appreciated and remembered all of the fallen soliders and how they gave their lives for us and to keep the beautiful country we live in.  ANZAC info  

 Home for some breakfast, some physio practise (I had my upcoming prac exam in Canada and Jo was awesome at helping me) We decided it would be nice to go for a bike ride, heres where I explain I've never riden a road bike before, sure you say no worries easy enough, but not for me!!!!  I borrowed Enzo's bike where the seat couldn't adjust but now I'm just fishing for excuses. The feeling was so foreign to me, I felt really off balanced and developed a back ache but wanted to get better at it and practise was the key.....

We stopped at the Canberra library as the concrete wall surrounding it is made for climbers, well not really strickly speaking but sure looks like it and the climbers come here to train doing traverses, with the river in the background pretty nice place to stop even if I found the climbing a little too challenging for my current ability.

That night was made special being invited around to Enzo's family dinner night (minus Enzo).Coming from an Italian family we had lots of delicious food and lots of laughter and family banter, what a fun and welcoming family.

Canberra surprised me actually, I felt quite comfortable as a place I could possibly live in, things are central yet there are still mountains to get to quite easily and ski fields if and when we get some snow
In all too soon my time was up and time to board yet another plane for an early morning start to travel for hours to make it back to Perth and yes fly again the next morning up to work.  It was definitely worth every minute of it and am so appreciative of having lovely close friends as Jo and Enzo are :-)