With our way north to Parkes from Narrandera stymied by persistent rain and subzero overnight temperatures, we decided to move Canberra up in the schedule and spend a couple of nights in a warm hotel room in the heart of our nation's capital. A leisurely drive through Wagga Wagga and Gundagai had Parliament House in view by late afternoon so we did a drive by, waved to Albo from afar under the careful gaze of the Federal Police, did a quick tour of Embassy Way and headed to the Hotel for a bit of R&R.

The next morning we headed to The Australian War Memorial, a place that's long been on my bucket list. My generation thankfully, unless one has chosen military life as a vocation, has never endured large scale conflicts and the horror and hardship they have wrought on our forebears. I had expected goosebumps but was not prepared for the waves of emotion that washed over me as I moved though the exhibits, onto the Wall of Remembrance and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Countless stories of shit scared young men and women, some individually and some collectively, staring down that fear and acting decisively and heroically in the face of overwhelming danger to themselves fires your imagination. This isn't Boy's Own stuff or the Biggles Comics that I read voraciously as a child, these were real people, living in horrendous conditions doing extraordinary things for a cause that they believed in and for their mates. Especially their mates.

Far from glorifying war, this place honours those young men and women, who gathered together from all over our country and went off to war in a place far, far from home and didn't return. I reckon that deserves more than a few goosebumps.

Next on our list the following morning was the National Gallery of Australia, after checking out Old Parliament House and the Tent Embassy.

There are over 150,000 works of art at the gallery but I was only interested in one of them really - Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles.

Gough payed $1.3 million for it in 1973 which caused a furor at the time but on current value of over $350 million I reckon he did ok! I confess I don't really get it, I mean it looked ok to me, kind of pleasing in the way it visually comes together but I don't see what the fuss is about.

We spent a few hours wandering through the gallery, the architecture was interesting - reminiscent of MONA in places and like MONA some pieces I loved and some were - well meh.

I enjoyed the couple of days we spent in Canberra, our visit coincided with the swearing in of our new Cabinet so there was a buzz in the air and a feeling of optimism that we picked up on which was a surprise to me given we were fleeting visitors.

Accessibility: As you'd expect both the War Memorial and National Gallery have gone to great lengths to make ALL of their displays accessible to all mobility impaired people, Parking, access and toilets are disabled friendly.

On to Parkes now for bucket list item 3 the dish, via Bathurst so the Carni will get a spin around Mt Panorama with Kathy J at the wheel.