Very Much Still Alive

I'm writing this from our hotel apartment in Queanbeyan- which is in New South Wales, a short hop from Canberra, the capital of Australia. Canberra is in the Australian Capital Territory, an independant patch of land in the middle of NSW but somehow NOT NSW (a bit like Washington DC in that respect.) Suffice to say we're not exactly in Party Central, Australia - but it's a gorgeous city and there is nowhere I would rather be right this very moment.

The good news is that there is no bad news - today was one of our longest driving days (8 hours or thereabouts) and we've all had a glorious day. With every passing kilometre I could literally feel the stress, worry and hysteria of the past few months just seeping out of my pores - in between eating too many gummy snakes and changing the CDs over for the kids I managed to have a think about a few things, catch a nap (or two or three) and just really relax as the Victorian, New South Wales, and ACT landscape just passed on by.

It was a glorious, blue sky sort of day - the kind where it looks like the perfect white fluffy clouds have been painted into the sky, where even the sheep and cows on the side of the road appear to have been Photoshopped onto the hillsides. We spent our day visiting various gourmet spots (and as a result now have a car boot filled with indulgences), walking around country towns, and in general loving every minute of our adventure. The kids did not ask for nor need any sort of electronic stimulation (not a single kid asked to play on my phone, which is pretty miraculous when you consider they often ask on the drive from their bus stop to home - which is about 3 minutes long.)

All in all, today was a really great start to our Geeks Tour of Southern Australia - the only real "excitement" of the day was when DH looked at the fuel thingie which said we had "1 kilometre to empty" and the nearest gas station was 14 kilometres away. HE managed to be in a flap about it, I viewed it as an opportunity to teach the kids a lesson about packing too much shit in the car. Pushing the car that far would have surely made my point abundantly clear, no?

Tomorrow the Geek Tour begins properly, as we fit in views from the tops of various mountains, a birthday* picnic at Causarina Sands (thanks Kazari for the idea) and then an afternoon at...yes, the National Dinosaur Museum. Chat to you tomorrow, but for now this is a very tired but very happy and relaxed emzee, signing off.


*Post about this to follow, but DH totally ACED my birthday cake and I've got the pictures to prove it. We had to enjoy it earlier than my real birthday, but suffice to say he didn't stuff up a single part of it (okay, he did. But it was *my* fault and so that does not really count.)