A load of hot air

Dawn is a beautiful time of the day, the only problem is it’s so goddam early on a weekend! The sacrifice of any sort of a lie in was for Canberra’s annual balloon fiesta, taking place all along the lake with activities concentrated around Old Parliament House. 6:15am and there were an unfeasibly large number of people milling about armed with tripods and all sorts of other contraptions, but no signs of any big inflatable things. So I headed down to the lakeside to see the sun come up and add a bit of warmth to proceedings.

Leaving the glare of the lake shores I turned back to Old Parliament House where now things were really happening. It seems the Canburnians (I’ve made that word up) love for fold up camping chairs continues into autumn, I’m just surprised there were hardly any eskies (coolboxes, chillybins, whatever…) littering the place. Anyway, the balloons began to fill with hot air and sedately drifted over the national landmarks.

As one by one they drifted into the air I frantically pedalled across the bridge to the other side of the lake to see colourful round things rising from all over the place…there must have been 50 or so balloons in the sky at one point. Now don’t let anyone tell you Canberra is boring…I mean 50 balloons, wow! Seriously, watching them drift along is strangely mesmerising and seems the perfectly normal thing to do on an autumnal Saturday morning.