It's been about a year since we traveled this deep into Southwest Sydney - funny that.

Capital Hill

Capital Hill is a suburb in the outer reaches of Southwest Sydney. There are a few ways to get here. The easiest way is to drive, which will take you around three hours from Central (three and a half if you stop for an obligatory Big Merino selfie on the way).

Alternate modes of transport include a bus from Central or a train from Central. If you do this you'll have to change at a dodgy neighbourhood called Canberra, so these ways are not recommended.

You could also carpool with a politician, but in light of recent news headlines, I'd recommend avoiding that too.

Taking my own advice, I drove here, parking at the suburb's single underground public carpark.

There are a convenient set of stairs to get into the suburb's main bit.

This takes you out onto a pretty grand lawn.

The lawn features a large amount of sticks, with some rather scenic mountains in the horizon,

an honourable stone,

and a couple of cute animals. I saw some rabbits run into these bushes (I was too slow to capture this, so you'll just have to believe me),

and there are some adorable bright green birds who hang out here. Enjoy squinting at this poor quality picture to try and find one.

At the base of the lawn is a highway. I wouldn't recommend running across the lanes of traffic to the other side as doing so would leave you in another suburb, which isn't what we do here.

At the other end of the lawn is the main point of interest in Capital Hill - this building.

This is Parliament House - the place of work of all of the politicians that we love to hate (and the rare one or two that we kind of like).

You may or may not be aware, but the building is open to the public and anybody can drop by. Due to Covid, you need to "pre-book" your entry, but I was able to do this on my phone literally 10 minutes before coming in so it's no biggie.

Once inside, you can take yourself on a "self-guided" tour. Visitors are restricted to certain areas which meant I couldn't take the year 6 camp photo of myself in the parliament chambers, but that's OK.

Instead, I looked at pictures of politicans,

funky architecture,

paintings of Prime Ministers,

and other items of historical significance.

Interestingly, during my visit they had a gallery on Edmund Barton, Australia's first PM. His government granted women's suffrage, and put in place the White Australia Policy, making him the direct predecessor of Pauline Hanson.

The part of this gallery I particularly enjoyed was this wall of political cartoons from the era. My personal highlight is the one on the top right, which can be summarised as "haha that guy's fat".

#cancelled

After my limited self-guided tour, I headed towards the exits,

via the Parliament House gift shop.

Here, you can buy books about your favourite Prime Minister,

or favourite Prime Minister on a magnet, mug,

or post card. I also found out that Kevin Rudd, for his official photo, decided to take his tie off and undo his top button. I suppose it was easy to be sexy when your competition was John Howard.

After wiping my brow of Kevin07 induced sweat, I headed back outside.

Most visits to Capital Hill would end with the tour of Parliament, but I chose to spend a bit of time exploring the outdoor bits of the suburb. This took me past what I assume is Capital Hill Hill. (It's no Rooty Hill Hill but it will do).

Following the road along,

eventually led me to a parliamentary bushwalk.

Now, don't get me wrong, this isn't a particularly thickly-bushed path,

but it still makes for a surprising change from the geometric lines of Parliament House.

The main reason I came this way was to head towards a point of interest I saw on my phone's map. I wasn't sure if the spot was even open to the public, but it's not like there's much else to do in this suburb, so I headed that way,