We visited the capital city of Canberra which is halfway between Melbourne and Sydney and had to be built to stop the arguing between the two cities on who should have the parliament house. Some sheep stations were bought up and the ACT or Australian Capital Territory was born and the whole town was made from scratch. There are two major car events held here every year with one being a round of the V8 Supercar series like Craig Lowndes's car below and literally passes between the old and new parliament houses. That would be like having a stock car race out the front of the White House! The other event is the Summernats which is our largest custom car show in the country.

Our Parliament House and standing on it's roof looking towards the old one.

There is plenty to see with the usual show and shine, best engineered etc. but also events like Horsepower Heroes where cars are strapped to a dyno in front of the crowd with large overhead screens so you could check the graphs while it was happening. The top one was just over 1000 hp. but most V8 were in the 300 hp. range for street driven cars at the rear wheels.  They also had a Sound Off competition where the loudest stereo's were measured against each other to Best Burnouts and Flag and Barrel races.

Craig Lowndes race car and doing the 'Kiss of Death'

There were few 4wd's as no self respecting real 4wd would be able to enter and those that were proved the point as have never seen any in the bush and aren't even legal on our roads. There was this Mini below that is a good example of how big an engine can we fit in the smallest car category!

Only see them at shows here and a V8 powered Mini Ute.

What did draw a lot of onlookers is the just released Holden Monaro that is powered by a 5.7 ltr. 255 kw Chev with rear wheel drive as all cars made in this size in Australia are. There has been quite some interest from GM to import it into the States as a Chevy Lumina Coupe and also to the UK and South Africa were they export cars to already.

The just released Holden Monaro coupe that might be US bound.

Well another 5,800 trouble free kms to add to my touring total and have started planning the next trip to the last State untouched by XJ tyres ( CJ7 ones though ) of Tasmania where we will have to drive onto a ship for a 14 hour overnight cruise to get there. I was very happy that my new bumpers weren't full of stone chips from the many gravel roads we traveled on after making the new alterations to the trailer which you can see on the trailer page if you wish. Also the bottom of the doors were well protected after the install of the rubber sill guards that I made which is shown in the how to section. Our dogs were very happy to see us and was the first time that the new Akita had been left without us. So until the next installment, see ya later.

Re-united with the other family members.

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