The House(s) of Fran_mart

 The drive up was pretty reasonable apart from surprisingly heavy traffic on the Cooma to Bombala  section.  There were a couple of groups of Italian cars - 3 Alfas and about 10 km later about 6 Ferraris - but I have no idea what they were about.   After settling in the main attraction was the sun setting behind Black Mountain. On the morning of the 9th as we set off on our morning walk we noticed the abseilers were doing the business on people's windows.  These were on the South Tower in Allara St: the images are a little out of the order in which I took but seem to sequence OK> This continues to be a job for the imagination-challenged! We got to Commonwealth Park and to my amazement found Floriade being rebuilt.  My suspicion is that it is less than 6 months since the beds were removed!  An alert auditor might like to explore the value for money given by this rubbish - especially the astonishing amount which must be paid for hiring the tempor...

  Having done 1,000 km (not hard with a trip to Mallacoota and back at 350 km each way) it was time for the Mazda to get its first service.   The drive up to Canberra on Monday 13 June had some potential to be interesting.  The first element of this was realising it was the last day of the long weekend which opens the ski season.  So there was potential for chaos on the stretch from Cooma to Canberra.  A second element was the poor weather - cold and damp - leading to an Alpine weather warning from Brown Mountain to Cooma.  So we set off early to minimise the first issue and hope that the second was not too bad. As it turned out there was no evidence of snow or ice on the 'Alpine' stretch.  Rather than the forecast 2C it was 4C when we came through Nimmitabel.   I noticed a rally car parked by the bakery in Nimmitabel and guessed there had been an event at Bega. The results  are  here , and lots of photos etc in  this Face...

 Frances went for a walk in Commonwealth Park on our first morning here.  (I had a bout of gastro or something so didn't accompany her.)  She reported that it looked as though the marathon was finishing there as there were lots of portaloos evident.  I remembered that a Midnight Oil concert was scheduled for sometime in April and thought that a more likely cause. Indeed so it was.  The concert was due that evening but became controversial as there was a huge storm and the concert was abandoned just before the Oils fired up.  Some punters had been waiting in the rain for 3 hours and then spent more hours in a traffic jam getting out.  Not happy. Two days later the pull down was happening.  Here is a section of the portaloos!  (The fundi is exploring the turf rather than wishing he'd been able to get into the portaloos.) The back of the stage.  I have no provable idea why such a big area is needed.  Perhaps to accommodate the egos of ...