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Yesterday we traveled by tram from our stay at The Element Hotel in Richmond to our house sit in Burwood, both suburbs of Melbourne. We walked about 10 mins from the tram stop and were warmly greeted by our homeowner.

We chatted and then went over her welcome guide and all the information it contained. Her 11 year old granddaughter was emceeing and playing in a violin recital, so she attended while we started to get to know “our” new pets, Jaffa, the dog, and the two cats, young Crumble, and the older, largest cat we’ve sat for, Minty.

Jaffa loves to cuddle and makes little snorting noises when he sleeps. Minty seems pretty chill but will cuddle as well. Crumble is a sweet cuddler as well but also loves to explore and play. He will keep us amused and on our toes while we’re here.

Today, after seeing our homeowner off, we caught up on work, laundry, and did a small grocery shop. Tomorrow, we’ll have our daily routine established and will start seeing what we can see in the area and in downtown Melbourne.

The reason for our trip to Australia is almost here. We meet the homeowner and the pets tomorrow afternoon and assume caring responsibilities on Wednesday morning. Because we don’t like to tempt fate, we usually try to get as close to the housesit as possible the night before just to make sure there aren’t any travel hiccups.

This morning we left the hotel in Canberra a little before 11:00 am. We traveled by Uber to the airport, where we sadly learned that no check-in was possible until 90 minutes before the flight. We had a little over an hour wait to check-in. After that, things went smoothly, and we continued our journey to tonight’s hotel in Melbourne via plane, bus, and then tram. Bob researched all the details, so it made for an easy commute.

I had a lovely run on a quiet Sunday morning in Canberra before we went down for our free hotel breakfast. Then we headed out to explore some of the free museums and government buildings, which we only looked at from across the river yesterday. It has been a mostly overcast day with highs in the upper 50s.

Our first stop was the National Library of Australia, which was about a 40 minute walk from our hotel. On the way we passed the Civic Library, which wasn’t open, as well as some other municipal and territorial government buildings.

The National Library of Australia is one of many free national buildings in what’s referred to as the Parliamentary Zone. Only the ground floor was open to the public, although we were there too early to get in the Reading Room. However, we still got to explore their current exhibit from which we learned quite a bit about Australian history.

The following are some of the important dates in the formation of Australia and its government that we learned from the library’s exhibit. 1768 — James Cook’s Endeavor voyage charts the eastern seaboard of Australia. 1788 — Sydney was formed as a penal colony. 1804 — Hobart formed, also as a penal colony. 1828 — Western Australia provincial government formed followed by South Australia in 1836 and Victoria in 1851. 1901 — Australia becomes a federation after application to and approval by Queen Victoria.

After leaving the library, we headed towards Parliament House. On the way, we passed the Old Parliament Building which has been converted into The Museum of Australian Democracy. Parliament met in Melbourne from the federation’s establishment in 1901 through May of 1927.

The Parliament House opened in 1988. It is one of the largest buildings in the southern hemisphere, 300 meters by 300 meters and has 4,500 rooms. Australia has had 31 Prime Ministers since 1901, one of which has been female, so ahead of the US in that department.

From the Parliament Building, we headed to the National Portrait Gallery, which not surprising, didn’t have many portraits of people we knew.

Heading back into town, we walked along the waterfront where there are a number of flags displayed as well as an Australian of the Year Walk that honors Australians in different categories.

Yesterday, Bob and I spent much of the day on planes flying (and losing a couple hours) from Perth to Canberra via Melbourne. We are pretty proud of the fact that we left Perth having spent no money on food or drink due to the free breakfasts and canapé spread in the evenings for Marriott Bonvoy Club members.

We arrived at the Midnight Hotel, another Marriott hotel, in Canberra, the capital of Australia at about 7:00 last night via cab from the airport. Our visit to Canberra brings us to the Australian Capital Territory, which means we have at some point briefly visited each of the 6 states — New South Wales (Sydney), Queensland (Brisbane), South Australia (Adelaide and Barossa Valley), Tasmania (multiple towns), Victoria (Melbourne), Western Australia (Perth), and 1 of its 2 territories. We have not yet visited the Northern Territory.

Canberra has a population of approximately 450,000, which makes it Australia’s largest inland city. We had a good walkabout today to get an initial overview of some of its most prominent sites. We hope to explore some of those further tomorrow.

First, we headed to the Australian War Memorial, which seems to be in the midst of a pretty comprehensive renovation. To be honest, we weren’t as interested in the memorial as accessing the trails behind to climb Mount Ainslie for the overlook, but we did look at some of the sculptures on the grounds.

The trail to the top of Mount Ainslie begins behind the War Memorial and is 1.8 miles with a 525 foot elevation gain.

After descending the mountain, we walked along the ANZAC Parade to view some of the memorials that line both sides of the road. ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp.

Finally, we made our way down to the lovely trail along the Molonglo River, which was quite active on a Saturday, to get a little closer view of some of the national museums located there.

Today was a gorgeous, sunny, too many photos kind of day. The best kind of day to have! We walked the amazing 6.5 mile trail around the Swan River but also added on a walk onto Heirisson Island to look for kangaroos and a walk up to Kings Park to see some of the beautiful, large park and enjoy some great views of the city. We just kept saying how beautiful everything was. Feeling very blessed.

We started our first full day in Perth with separate activities. I worked out in the hotel’s impressive gym, and Bob went walking down by the waterfront (the Swan River) to see what he could see in the dark.

We enjoyed a great (and free!) hot and cold spread for breakfast before venturing out for mostly indoor activities due to the forecasted rain. We walked through Murray Street Mall to get to Perth Station, the main train/tram station for the city center. Yesterday, we took the tram from the airport into the city and got off at Mciver station. Bob wanted to see this station as we could catch our tram here back to the airport on Friday. We were assisted by a rail official who had lots of helpful information. We have been very impressed with the customer service here.

Next, it was on to the Perth Cultural Centre. The Centre is composed of six institutions, 1) the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia (WA), 2) Art Gallery of WA, 3) WA Museum of Boola Badip, 4) State Library of WA, 5) The Blue Room Theatre, and 6) Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. We focused on the library and art gallery.

The WA State Library was a bit of disappointment. Architecturally, it wasn’t very interesting, and it only had a small exhibit called Stuff that showed the range of items that the library collects, seemingly a bit of everything. The library did have a good film playing that talked about their work as well.

The Art Gallery of WA was a popular place today. There must have been at least 5 school groups there while we were there. We were most impressed with the current exhibit, that featured a number of big heads, the exhibit by Year 12 high school students, and the views from the top of the building.

Bob and I enjoyed our wine tasting Monday afternoon at the Seppeltsfield Winery. It was a quiet day there, as we were the only visitors, so we were able to have a good chat with our pourer.

This morning we left Tanunda to drive back to the Adelaide airport to fly to Perth in Western Australia. We left Adelaide a little late, at about 12:30 p.m Adelaide time and arrived in Perth about 3:40 p.m. Perth time. Oddly, Perth is 1.5 hours behind Adelaide.

Perth is the capital and largest city of Western Australia with a population of 2.1 million. It is located along the Indian Ocean. For our Scottish friends, it was named after the city of Perth in Scotland, a town that Bob and I are not familiar with. It is the regional headquarters of several mining operations.

We have moved beyond the marathon and are back in Bob 60th birthday celebration mode. We are members of the Marriott hotel program, so have free hotel stays in the Westin Hotel in Perth while we are here, but Bob had requested (and we got) an upgrade to a suite. We are now feeling quite pampered and may end up having a relaxing stay in Perth by spending some time in the hotel .😀

After a pretty good post-marathon dinner last night and a night of sleep, we started our third day with a visit to the laundromat across the street from our hotel. We hadn’t washed clothes since our time in Janesville, Wisconsin. The laundromat was bright and clean, although no seats, and the cost was $4 Australian to wash and $6 Australian to dry (for 30 minutes).

After folding and storing the washed clothes, we decided to go out and about even though it was dreary out. First, we hit the Barossa Sculpture Park by an overlook. The fog/mist/dew didn’t allow for any view to speak of, but we got to check out a few sculptures, including a big head sculpture for Bob.

Next, Bob had found a cheese shop he was interested in, so we drove a short distance to the nearby town of Angaston. The cheese shop was nice to look around and Bob was going to do a cheese tasting but the place seemed to be staffed by only one employee who wasn’t able to get to all of the potential customers. Beth did a quick walk through town while Bob was in the shop.

Next, we drove a short distance to a chocolate shop, the Barossa Valley Chocolate Company, that also had a cafe and a cellar door.

Lastly, we returned to our hotel in Tanunda to explore the shopping district near our hotel. We started in a next door gallery and made a surprising discovery behind in the back of the building.

This afternoon we’ll be doing another wine tasting that we had scheduled online. This one will be at Seppeltsfield.

Yesterday, we left Adelaide by bussing to the airport to pick up a rental car which we drove up to Tanunda, one of the four main cities in the Barossa Valley wine region. Bob always gets a little anxious with driving on the left, but he picked it back up with no problem.

We were able to check into our hotel room early and just hung out after we picked up groceries at the local Foodland right across the street to give my legs a rest before the today’s marathon.

I have been stressing about the marathon, as the forecast was for rain and wind — two elements that I avoid in my training runs. Such is karma. The run started at 7:30am this morning, and as forecasted, it was windy, chilly, and rainy. I survived and finished second (out of only 9) in my age/gender category. Bob drove me to the start and met me at the end.

We had made wine tasting reservations online prior to our arrival for a 2:00 pm tasting at Jacob’s Creek, a brand we’re familiar with. It was a nice (not spectacular) facility and good wines with a friendly pourer. They had multiple tasting options for $10 Australian (approximately US$6.70), but if you visit the Barossa Valley and have limited time, there are probably more impressive cellar doors.

After the tasting, we stopped at Chateau Tanunda since they sponsored the marathon event. We wanted to at least see the grounds of the Barossa Valley’s first winery. Bob and I split a glass, the nice hostess poured it in two glasses for us and stoked up the fire.

We expected a rainy day today, and we got it, so we headed down North Terrace Street (where our hotel is also located) to visit some of Adelaide’s free indoor attractions. On our way, we saw a few statues of important individuals from South Australia as well as an impressive war memorial and Anzac Centenary Memorial Walk and Wall.

Our first stop was the State Library of South Australia. It was created in 1834 and their collections are focused on South Australiana, family history, and special collections. Parts of the library are under construction, but we still got to see a number of exhibits, including an interesting one on old menus.

From the State Library, we walked down the block to the Art Gallery of South Australia. The gallery has one of the largest art museum collections in Australia, comprising almost 47,000 works of art spanning 2,000 years. We thought it might be focused exclusively on South Australian artists, but that wasn’t the case.

Our final stop was at the Migration Museum. This museum provided a good overview of the evolution of migration to Australia as well as the changing national migration policies. It celebrates cultural diversity and the contributions of the different immigrants to Australia.