Aussi treat

I guess this is the Austraulia version of a slurpee. It's a frozen Fanta from McDonald's.

Hmmmmm.

Riding the bus

Hester and Andreas don't have a car so we walk or ride the bus everywhere.

Luckily there are reserved seats for Hester!

Black Mountain Tower

See that tower over there?  We decided to go there on Saturday.  It's the highest point in Canberra and has fantastic 360 degree views.

So we took the bus up there and took the elevator to the top.

The Snowy River country is beyond those hills behind Toby.

This is downtown Canberra.

 We had to wait for the bus so we just hung out in the fabulous sunshine on the viewing deck.

 Hester keeps hoping that baby Moses will decide to come.  (Toby was prepared with a book.  He read 7 books last weekend.)

Canberra has beautiful blue skies.  The air is clean and clear.  It has been really nice to just be here and relax in such a beautiful place.

Botanical Garden

Today we went to the Botanical Garden.

It was the perfect day for a walk.

We saw lots of beautiful gardens,

trees,

rain forests,

and rock gardens.

There were also lots of these water dragons.

It was a nice way to spend the afternoon. (Except for the mosquitos.)

Then we went to the greenhouse to see the orchids and found this:

But, still no baby. I think we've walked ten miles in the last few days. Apparently, it isn't working.

Making Money

On Friday we went to the Royal Australian Mint. Pretty interesting. Australia didn't start making it's own money until about 70 years ago. The current currency (decimal coinage) wasn't minted until 1965.

This staircase has real coins and blanks behind the glass. I think it looks pretty and cool.

This big robot is named Titan. He dumps big barrels of coin blanks into the hopper and they are on their way to being made into money. The operator had Titan dancing for us too. After he poured the money into the hopper, he bowed.

Toby needs your help

Toby has an assignment for school for which he needs to conduct a short survey.  Can you help out by answering a few questions?  It won't take long,  I promise.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Thanks for your help!