Ryan's Journal: Days 80 - 85

Day 80

Distance travelled: 660km!!!

We packed up early because we knew we had a huge day of driving. It was pretty uneventful. We watched movies in the back while Mum and Dad shared the driving. For lunch we went to a bakery at St George. We all had pies and then shopped for dinner, before driving on to Lightning Ridge, an eight hour car trip.

We had a look around Lightning Ridge. It’s a black opal mining town so we looked through the many different opal shops, and bought Mum a necklace! At Lightning Ridge there is also a thermal pool, about 40 degrees! So Nick and I relaxed in there while Dad was cooking dinner.

We spent the rest of the night sitting in the camp kitchen watching Sydney beat Collingwood in the preliminary final!

 

Day 81

Distance travelled: 560km

Today was another driving day. We had planned to drive to Dubbo and stay there, but mum and dad decided it would be more fun to drive to the radio telescope (“The Dish”) in Parkes and stay there. We got to the telescope in the middle of the afternoon and spent a couple of hours there. We watched some 3D movies about space, looked around the information centre and, of course, looked at the telescope. It was massive!

Then we drove into the town, but mum and dad couldn’t find anywhere they wanted to stay. So we kept on driving. It was starting to get dark when we finally found a free campsite in a little town called Gooloogong. Us boys couldn’t be bothered putting up our tent, so we decided to sleep under the stars.

Day 82

Distance travelled: 300km

We packed up at Gooloogong and started driving towards Canberra. We stopped at the Cooma house in Yass. It’s a house where explorer Hamilton Hume lived after his days of exploring.

When we got to Canberra we set up camp at the showgrounds. We went to Parliament House and had a look around at the huge building.

 It was getting late so we went out for dinner and then went up to Telstra Tower which has a view looking out over Canberra.

                                                              

Day 83

Distance travelled: 60km

We woke early so we could get to Questacon, an interactive science centre. After having breakfast we left and did some shopping, before arriving at 10.  Questacon is huge! It had seven galleries full of information. My favourite was the “Excite” gallery, which had two unique air hockey tables, one against a robot and one a four player game. It also had a drop slide, that I spent most of my time on. One time I was taking Nick up there, but he chickened out when we were at the top! It also had a ‘360’. A swing that you had to try and swing around a full 360! I didn’t go on that...

When we finally got out, it was four. We had spent a whole six hours in there! We found a park (after some ‘great’ navigating by me) and had a BBQ by the lake.

 

Day 84

Distance travelled: 60km

 

The AIS, Australian Institute of Sport was our first stop today. First we were taken up to the ‘games’ room, which had interactive games, skiing, skateboarding and stuff like that. We went on a tour at ten, guided by an athlete that had trained there. It was massive! It also had everything. There was a gymnastics hall, that was huge, a 14 million dollar swimming & recovery facility, a big stadium, a place for just about every sport!

We moved on to a place called Cockington Green. It’s a place where people have made miniature dioramas of buildings, mainly from England also but from all over the world. It was amazing looking through the gardens that had all of its flowers, flowering. The buildings were in great detail, and some took as long as five years to build.

We moved on from the AIS to the Mint, where money is made! We watched thousands of $$$ being made by robots.

We only spent a little bit of time there, before heading out to the War Memorial. We looked through, and got lost in the massive memorial. There are many different dioramas and plenty of information to read. We spent the rest of the afternoon there, and watched the closing ceremony, where the man with the bagpipes plays.

We went back to camp where we ate dinner in the car because it was so cold!

 

Day 85

Distance travelled: 675km

Today we were heading home!!! Basically, we spent about nine hours in the car, making a dash from Canberra to home. We woke up at 5.30 and packed the car, and were gone by 6.30. We drove for a couple of hours and then got breakfast at a cafe at the Dog on the Tucker Box. Then we continued to drive for a couple of hours and we stopped again, eating fruit that we had picked up along the way. Then we drove for a few more hours, before dropping in at Yarra Glen to see my Uncle and Auntie Alex & Wendy.

It was a pretty boring drive but we were all excited to finally get home, and when we did, we celebrated with roast pork for dinner and pancakes, fruit and ice-cream for dessert with Oma, Opa and Auntie Di!