I have been intending to come to the National Arboretum for more than 5 years, and every time I’ve come to Canberra I’ve done something else, and not got around to it. I think it’s like the Strathgordon Dam in Tasmania in that regard, somewhere that’s been on my to go to list for ages, yet each time I'm nearby have not gone to.
So today was the day to actually go there. It was a pretty easy drive from my AirBnB out to the Arboretum.
I’d woken early and decided not to get up because of the cold really early, but spent the morning trying to find somewhere to eat breakfast.
In the end I had a little fruit pot from my travelling snacks container for breakfast before leaving, then at the Arboretum I would have…a second breakfast.
Upon arriving I took the longer road up to the arboretum, going to Dairy Farmer's Hill.
Inside the arboretum's visitor centre was a cafe, where I had an egg and bacon roll. Yes, similar to yesterday, but this one was made out of more fancy ingredients. But was less fresh and piping hot than yesterday's offering, with bottled juice.
I sat in the visitor centre for a little bit, just having my breakfast and juice, there was barely half a dozen people in there in the morning.
After this I had a bit of a wander around the bonsai area.
Then I went down to the STEP (Southern Tablelands Ecosystems Park) area. Having paid and parked near the Arboretum entrance I was going to walk down there. But instead decided to drive around to the car park nearby, the ‘overflow car park’. After wandering around here for a bit - I chose this because it was one of the shortest tracks to walk along.
I then went around to the Himalayan Cedar forest.
This was majestic in an odd way, tall forests is not something I see a lot of, so to wander around one, and be safe in one, despite all of established folklore telling me that it’s not safe to wander a path in a forest like this. Here be monsters, or people in red cloaks, or wolves or whatever. Regardless of the fact that the most scary thing likely to be encountered would be a magpie.
I didn’t even see any of those, only saw a handful of people.
It was early-ish in the day.
Notable here is that there’s a toilet and a barbecue area as well, although it’s a decent walk down hill to get to it, but you’re rewarded with a nice view.
I proceeded to walk up to hill towards the 'Wide Brown Land' sculpture.
I took a few more photos around here for a bit before returning to my ute to return to head onto the next destination; the National Museum of Australia.