We decided to leave Tumut by 8:00am knowing that it would take about 2.5 hours to drive to Canberra.
We left Tumut and headed towards Gundagai via a back road. There was another more direct route to Yass (this is where you exit the Hume Highway to travel to Canberra) but we knew that it was a part gravel road having travelled that way about 20 years ago. We made great time getting to Gundagai and the GPS indicated that our expected arrival time at Canberra was achievable. That’s when the head wind hit us. We had been cruising with fuel consumption hovering around the 13.8 litres per 100k’s but this rose to well over 16 litres per 100k’s when the wind hit us. To make matters worse, we were travelling directly into the wind. We had intended to refuel at Yass but the added wind now caused concern as to the ability to actually get there. We had calculated the range of the Iveco in the past and under normal circumstances, Yass was a safe option but without the wind.
We slowed somewhat to conserve fuel but that did not stop the low fuel light from illuminating with a considerable distance to travel. The Iveco’s computer displays heaps of information about the trip including the “Range” calculated from current consumption and remaining fuel. The computer indicated that Yass was well within range. Then the “Low Fuel” message appeared on the computer display (we had never seen this before) and the computer removed the “Range”. We were now concerned but believed we still had sufficient fuel to reach Yass.
We made Yass without any further warnings and added 80 litres of fuel. This indicated that we probably had another 40 kilometres left in the tank.
The remaining part of the trip to Canberra was uneventful and we headed directly to the Canberra Tourist Information Centre. We spoke was a lady who went out of her way to help us. We walk out with a list of web sites to visit for information from WW2 plus maps of what we should see. One of the attractions in a Canberra visit was a trip to the National Art Gallery of Australia for the “Masterpieces From Paris” exhibition. When we were told the cost of admission plus the delays expected to actually get in, we decided that we would pass.
Next stop was the War Memorial where we could not find parking. The same applied to Parliament House so we decided to head to Mt Stromlo to lunch followed by the Canberra Space Centre.
I was pleasing to see further evidence of the regeneration following the fires in 2003. Nature is certainly wonderful.
We had booked into the Canberra Motor Village, a place we had stayed before and documented on this web site as being one of the worst ever. The only reason we were here now was simply because it was the only available place.
As was the case with our last visit, we were on a site that gave us a challenge to get the motor home level (which we were able to do) but this time the amenities blocks were clean.
We were collected by fiend for dinner at 6:00pm and we went to an excellent Chinese restaurant at Dickson. After dinner we were treated to a car tour of the area around the Canberra CDB and a trip to Mt Ainslie to view the night lights.
We returned to the motor home for coffee and talked until 11pm.