I escaped New Zealand this week for a quick trip across the Tasman to Australia on a fact finding mission for a project at work. You’d think that getting from Capital City Wellington to Capital City Canberra would be a simple journey to make. Not so!

It took 12 hours to hop from Wellington to Christchurch to Sydney to Canberra. So a two day programme visiting Government agencies required two days of travel too. Luckily armed with good book and iPod time passed by relatively quickly.

Most of Canberra was seen from inside a taxi. It reminded me a bit of Milton Keynes except a bit less green. The Parliament buildings at night are pretty impressive but otherwise I wasn’t that taken with the place. Certainly they have the worlds worst taxi regime where you have to use a voice activated system to get a cab – that’s assuming that the machine can understand what you are saying. I was reassured by locals that it wasn’t my pommie accent that was the problem.

Today I’m cruising Sydney which will be more of a pleasure before heading home to New Zealand. It’s not a bad way for this domestic executive to finish another working week, retail therapy in the hothouse of Aussie style!