Canberra and kangaroos

We are now in Canberra with the Miles and Rummery families who stayed with us in Vernon - lovely people and great tour guides/hosts. We are staying with Geoff and Michelle Miles but Cheryl and Alan Rummery are feeding us dinners - yummy Australian cheeses and crackers for appies, prawns and chicken skewers, rice pilaf, potatoes, salad, and lemon pie last night. Tonight??? Today, Geoff and Cheryl, Kate and Damian (both 14), Matt and Claire(both 11) and Claire's friend, Stacy, were our tour guides as we drove to a nature reserve and saw lots of kangaroos and about 10 emus. We also searched for koalas but no luck! We enjoyed a lovely walk through the bush, though, as we searched. Our next stop was The Floriade, an annual spring flower show in a downtown park. It consists of themed flower beds - this year's theme was movies so each bed had been planted to show something from a popular movie. For instance, crocodiles for Crocodile Dundee or a piano keyboard for Shine. Very beautiful!! We also saw a black swan with its fluffy grey cygnets! Our last stop was at an aviary where Shon, the girls and I spent about an hour feeding many kinds of lorikeets, parrots, cockatiels, etc as they climbed on, over and around us, even nibbling our shoe laces. Fun!
I am planning to download the aviary photos at Cheryl's later for the girls so will add a photo or two at that time.
Our trip from the Blue Mountains to Canberra was uneventful - lovely countryside after we navigated our way out of Sydney in our rental KIA car. A few wrong turns and an extra toll payment after taking a wrong exit made it more interesting!
More later,
Hugs to all from 'the travellers'