A TripAdvisor™ TripWow video of a travel blog to Thredbo Alpine village, NSW, Australia by TravelPod blogger Timgallantree. See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00c0-0dca-c8cf?ytv4=1 Day 1 - Sydney Canberra Thredbo Alpine Village "A Trekking Timmy G Ok, the start of a great new adventure. Although i've been on one of these things before i didn't really know what to expect but was pretty open minded and excited to what i would get out of it, what troubles would inevitably lie ahead and more importantly what kind of people i would consider my new family for the next 3 to 4 - weeks. After a ridiculously early start we stopped after a couple of hours for breakfast in a village somewhere. I was bloody well hungry so had a substantial bacon, egg, toast n trimmings with fresh orange thinking quite naively this would be what i would be eating most days. Time for introductions with the gang. What's your name? Where are you from? Where have you been? How long have you been in Australia? and Where are you going next? The standard questions you ask everyone you meet - i think you should have like big wipe-clean name badges with it all written on to save time, maybe not entering the spirit of things but would deffo save time. Ok, so the crew consisted of an Italian couple Thomas and Dania whom i would spend the entire trip with, a French girl called Isabelle who was surprisingly the chattiest, and an English girl Lucy who was lovely and reminded me of Cameron Diaz in 'There's something about Mary', the younger one who went to the prom with Ben Stiller. She was from Devizes, which is actually the only place i've ever heard of in Wiltshire which was handy. There were two other girls who went to a different cafe for breaky, Emma and Sarah who were from Southampton and Manchester-ish but were friends from Aston University - we all looked very sleepy but trying to remain upbeat when introductions came around. So, to my delight, a small amount of people with some very attractive English girls! The bus driver/ tour guide was the epitome of how i remember the typical Australian bloke, course and dry sense of humor and either has a very rehearsed tour spiel or more probable, was very quick witted and seem to have a funny phrase for most things we saw or situations we encountered. Apparently all drivers had a 'tour guide name' based on what happened to them on the training course, this guy was called 'Bogan' which i was told by the other Brits who had clearly been in Oz longer than me is like a cross between a chav and a gypsy - talk of mullets, checked shirts and ripped jeans were mentioned to describe them - **** i had 2 out of the 3! We never found out why he was labelled 'Bogan' though. He built up the first attraction in typical dry format saying 'over the hill would be something that would improve and enhance our lives forever and that we could happily die after we saw it', a monument of a town called Goulburn where some German guy decided to hand carve a big massive Merino Sheep. 'The Big Merino' is a 15 metre tall concrete Merino sheep (a type of sheep that is drought tolerant). Nicknamed "Rambo" by locals, the Big Merino contains a gift shop on the ground floor and a wool display on the second floor and is representative of Goulburns main industry. Capital City Canberra... nothing to write a blog about. First major attraction was a visit to Australia's capital, Canberra. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth largest Australian city overall. The site of Canberra was selected for the location of the nation's capital in 1908 as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's two largest cities. It is unusual among Australian and most other cities, being an entirely purpose-built, planned city. Following an international contest for the city's design, a design by the Chicago architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin was selected and construction commenced in 1913. The city's design was heavily influenced by the garden city movement and incorporates significant areas of natural vegetation that have earned Canberra the title "bush capital". The main parliament building was for some reason planned to be a temporary building at the bottom of the hill that the new building now sits on until 1936 when this one was finally built. We learned about some of the previous prime ministers. The one that stands out as a favourite with the Australian public for obvious reasons was Bob Hawke who in 1955 set a new beer drinking world record to down 2.5 pints of lager in 11 seconds ( ..." Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/timgallantree/1/1252274680/tpod.html Photos from this trip: A big Merino Sheep, Goulburn, NSW Parliament House

• published: 14 Dec 2010
• views: 1161