War Memorial, Back on the coast...and random topics

Yesterday was a bit of a long day of driving from Melbourne to Canberra. Once arrived, we ate dinner ate a local pub and went to bed.

On the route, couple of things to note we forgot to highlight in our last post:
- there is a "fruit fly exclusion zone", which means no state-to-state fruit transport...weird, right? Not weirder than the road signs showing cartoon images of fruit flies devouring native plants and spring harvests...clearly not something we deal with at home
- here, you can easily drive more than 250k without seeing a single gas station...a little scary considering we almost ran out of gas yesterday....don't worry, mum, we didn't.
- I actually drove yesterday and today...mostly highway but today was basically on the Sydney equivalent of 495 but up and down around mountains...bit sketchy but I managed!!

We posted about Braidwood earlier but after that we drove back to Canberra to visit the Australian War Memorial and hear my grandfather's oral histories about being a RAF pilot in WW2. Only trouble is that Charles and Camilla are stopping there on their Jubilee tour, which is trouble since tomorrow is Remembrance Day (Veteran's Day). We made it before them but still the memorial was swarmed w people obvy given the historic weekend. We looked around and found an exhibit on G'pa Bear's flying and even a photo of him in the museum but the library wasn't open until later and could not persuade them to open sooner for us...being from America w great-grand babies even. Still, we bought a poppy to wear tomorrow and really enjoyed the Memorial and thinking about him looking down from heaven knowing we were there. "Cheers! Here's to us, to those like us, damn few, and most of them are dead!"

Safely arrived in Umina, about an hour north of the city, on the coast as we wind down the major driving portion of our trip in favour of time w the fam -- we arrive at Uncle Brat's day after next and Grannie on the 15th.

Umina camp park is a LOT like Beth Page, Keith & Janice, we hope you're reading!! All the same trappings but of course on the other side of the world. Definitely made us think of our weekend with you!!

Hoping to post pictures tomorrow!!


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Location:Umina NSW Australia