At the beginning of last week Piers and I took a trip to Canberra to give a presentation at the Australian Government Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA). We were invited to talk about HermesLite and Earth2.0.

We hope to followup a number of interesting ideas and work with a few of the people that we met in the coming months. All in all it was a successful presentation and gave Piers a good chance to practise some of the presentation skills that we all leant a few weeks ago.

Being in Canberra also gave us a chance to have a quick look around the capital city. Having recently become an Australian citizen this was almost an initiation for me and it was fascinating to discover some of this history of the city. I had always thought that the location of Canberra was decided as it is equidistant between Sydney and Melbourne. I was told whilst there, that Sydney insisted that it be in New South Wales and Melbourne insisted that it be at least 100 miles (160km) from Sydney. Hence the ACT was born. It was not much of a place when it was first created as this photo of old parliament house shows.

Sheep grazing in front of parliament and no shops for the first few years. Not the grandest of political postings and a long way short of the best job in the world…