More pictures of driving from Cairns to Melbourne

Saturday, January 5, 2008

More pictures of driving from Cairns to Melbourne

1) Come and join me to see what it's like to drive those 4000 kilometers...

2) More places encountered on my road...

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest Australian city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory at the northern tip of the Australian Alps, the country's highest mountain range.

The area chosen for the capital had been inhabited by Indigenous Australians for up to 21,000 years, with the principal group being the Ngunnawal people. European settlement commenced in the first half of the 19th century, as evidenced by surviving landmarks such as St John's Anglican Church and Blundells Cottage.

On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies of Australia was achieved. Following a long dispute over whether Sydney or Melbourne should be the national capital, a compromise was reached: the new capital would be built in New South Wales, so long as it was at least 160 km from Sydney. The capital city was founded and formally named as Canberra in 1913.

A blueprint by American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin was selected after an international design contest, and construction commenced in 1913. Unusual among Australian cities, it is an entirely planned city.

Chiltern is a perfectly preserved gold-rush era town, built in the late 1850's when diggers tried their luck on the goldfields and fortunes were made and lost.

Their legacy is a streetscape of wide verandahs and historic buildings that tell the stories of European settlers and gold miners. Modern-day Chiltern is a peaceful haven nestled in the hills of the Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park.