We arrived in Sydney and rented a car to drive straight to Canberra.  We visited the Australian War Memorial first.  It is a very impressive museum. There are a ton of different artifacts from every war. They honor the soldiers with their portraits and medals and around the reflection pool they have lists of all the names of the soldiers from different wars and spaces for you to place a poppy to honor them.  The mosaics in the area of the tomb of the unknown soldier are unreal.  We have been to war museums in different countries and I find it interesting to see what each country focuses on in terms of battles.  I also thought it was interesting that Vietnam veterans in Australia faced the same issues as those in the USA. 

We visited two other museums, one in downtown Canberra, and the National Museum of Australia.  I wanted to like the last museum.  It was impressive in its size and decor, but inside the exhibits didn’t feel cohesive.  It was disappointing. 

We crashed early that night, so early that we skipped dinner.  I wish we worked harder to stay awake.  If you think you can just take a nap, think again! We woke up very early the next morning and decided we should just get moving as the sun rose.  Our destination was Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. The day started off very foggy, but it lifted before we arrived and we were able to see fields filled with kangaroos!  When we started driving through the Nature Reserve, there were kangaroos all around us. We were so lucky to see a mom with her joey right next to our car! 

We stopped in the Eucalyptus Forest, which is a protected area for koalas, and searched the trees.  We found none.  I’m not sure if the light was not bright enough or we are just terrible koala spotters.  We didn’t see any other animals either.  We also walked around the sanctuary and only saw a few water birds.  I looked very hard for platypus, but they are super difficult to find and we didn’t see any either.  It was actually very quiet on our walks through the woods and I think it was due to the cold temperature.  It was in the low 30s. 

We headed back to Canberra and stopped at Oporto, which is a Portuguese rotisserie chicken fast food restaurant.  It was delicious. We stopped at another nature area to look for birds, but only discovered a few ducks.  The most birds we found were in the parking lot of our hotel!  There were two cockatoos and three green parrots.  We discovered two red and black parrots on our drive as well. 

My husband told me that our next hotel would be located in a small town.  As we entered the area, the traffic increased immensely.  It is a very busy little town called Mittagong. We walked to an Italian restaurant for some tasty pasta and wood oven pizza for dinner. 

We woke up early again and headed to the supermarket, Woolworth, for breakfast.  We made an appointment at the Dingo Sanctuary in Bargo the night before.  It was about 20 minutes from our hotel.  When we arrived the dingos howled their greetings to us.  It was something else. 

We were met by a volunteer who has worked there for 12 years and of course I can’t remember his name.  You could tell that every dingo in the sanctuary was important to him.  He had another volunteer join us as he told us about each dingo and their mate.  She also demonstrated her knowledge and love for each dingo.  They were all well cared for and many eagerly came up to the fence to be greeted.  If you put your hand near the fence, they would sniff and lick you.  (We did this with permission.).

We paid extra to meet and pet a dingo. They showed us the one that usually meets people, but he hurt his paw and they didn’t want to stress him out, so they brought us an adorable female.  As you can see from the pictures, she loved being petted, but she was also just like a dog in that she wanted to sniff around the area.  It was fascinating to learn so much about dingos as we were meeting different ones from each area of Australia: desert, alpine, and tropical.  It was wonderful to see how much they were loved and cared for by the volunteers.  I was happy to have contributed to the care of the dingos and even bought a T-shirt. 

We briefly stopped at the Nan Tien Temple, looking inside the two temples and checking out the impressive Pagoda. There were quite a few people visiting. 

Then we drove to the coast and took some beach pictures before heading to the mountains and Budderoo National Park.  We stopped at Minnamurra Rain Forest walk.  We did not have enough energy or time to attempt the falls walk, but we did the Lyrebird Loop walk.  It was not all completely open because one of the suspension bridges was wiped out by a heavy flood.  It was about a mile walk on a cantilever high above the forest. It was a beautiful and quiet walk that we both thoroughly enjoyed. The rain forest was beautiful. 

We stopped at the Jamberoo lookout and Carrington Falls.  I was shocked by the size of the falls.  I thought it would be something small, but it was 164 feet tall. It was impressive. 

We walked through a small trail of the Yarrawa Brush in Robertson. It was near dusk and I was on high alert for snakes.  The sounds of the many different birds calling in the brush was surreal.  I wish I knew all the different ones that we heard. 

The next morning we drove to Booderee National Park.  We had to drive through the mountains and through Kangaroo Valley, which was shrouded in fog. We couldn’t see anything.  It looked amazing.  

Booderee had all kinds of hiking trails and beaches.  We arrived in the parking lot to find three kangaroos, including a mom and child. We hiked down to the Cave Beach.  My husband was hoping to see kangaroos on the beach, but we didn’t.  The beach was massive. When we returned to the parking lot, the mother kangaroo was feeding the joey.  There were also some people feeding the kangaroos even though there are tons of signs telling you not to do so. 

We drove around looking for another beach that didn’t require a hike.  We ended up at a dead end where the road was all water.  We found a beach, but no kangaroos. There were people there doing some kind of research though. 

On our drive back we stopped at Fitzroy Falls.  It was a short walk to the platform, which was hanging out over the cliff.  The falls were impressive, but it was a bit scary standing on the platform to look at them. 

There are a ton of wineries in the Highlands, so I wanted to go to at least one.  Bendooley Winery had tastings that you had to sign up to attend.  They were located in a restaurant area called Cellar Door.  We were the only people there.  We were able to choose 8 different wines.  They were all delicious. We especially loved the Pinot Noir Reserve that was grown on site. 

The next day, on our way to Sydney, we drove through the Blue Mountains.  We stopped in several different areas to take pictures of the view.  There was a large section that was closed due to landslides and active rock slides.  The views are amazing.