Canberra holiday full of flowers and sculptures

We had a weeks holiday in the nations capital, Canberra during the school holidays.
A visit to the new Parliament House was high on the kids list of things to do.  Its not brand new, just that we outgrew the first building constructed in the 1920s as a nation, which now serves as a museum.  You cannot see it, but the area underneath the flag is all lawn and you can take the lift to the lawned roof and look at the spectacular view

Floriade  was on during our stay, and its simply a magnificent display of flowers, mainly tulips and pansies,  As the weather was so nice, all the displays looked great and it was hard to take just one photo!

I love tulips, but they dont multiple like some other bulbs, so I dont have many in the garden.  But the array of different varieties they had planted, was amazing.

The displays are laid out with precision planting and all the designs are based on a theme.  There is a ferris wheel ride, and that would be the best way to see the garden bed designs, but I didn't bother - it was over priced and I knew my phone camera wouldn't do it justice.

This sculpture lives at the top of the windswept hill above the Arboretum in Canberra and was just magnificent.  The Arboretum is still a work in progress, as they plant 100 rare trees each year, but greatly developed since we were there about 15 years ago.  And the Japanese cherry trees were in blossom which was very pretty.

This sculpture by Stuart Taylor resides in the small NSW town of Lockhart, which hosts a competition for metal farm art this October.  We love driving the back roads (as opposed to the freeways) and came home from Canberra via Wagga Wagga, Lockhart, Deniliquin and Wycheproof.  Great places, great Aussie named towns!  Wycheproof  is a compulsory stop as my husband has two aunties living here, so we had a lovely visit, with country cooking - homemade  lamingtons for morning tea and scones for afternoon tea!  The aunt who made the scones had to have her son deal with a very big brown snake on her back lawn before we arrived.....the kids were very happy to be fed, but apprehensive about playing footy on the lawn!