Quick Jump: Driving on the Left | The CDSCC | Dog on the Tuckerbox | Lake Mulwala
Our original plan for this trip had been to stick to modes of transport wherein others did the driving, flying, etc. for us. Riding as passengers along the city streets of Sydney, we just did not feel ready to take on driving on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road. Pah! said Paul Dwyer, a professor in D's department at Sydney Uni. Rent a car-- it's the only way to see real Australia.
So, we swallowed our apprehension, rented a car on our last day in Canberra, and carefully attempted to drive against our most superficial driving instincts. Chad drove first (left), and if you click on the photo, you should get a short video that will give you a better sense of how strange it actually was. (This may take a few moments to download, so be patient. You must have an updated version of QuickTime player installed to see the video. Download it here, it's free!) Later, D took the wheel (below), and we traded off over the next three days, giggling at the strange signs and admiring the many many sheep and cows. Every once in a while, a big truck barreling down the "wrong" side of the two-lane roads would startle us a little, but it only took a few hours to get used to the arrangement. Remarkable as it may seem, 80-90% of your driving instincts have nothing to do with what side of the road you are on. As for the other 10%... well, Americans driving here tend to turn the windshield wipers on when they go for the turn signals, and the car rental company is nice enough to put little stickers on the instrument panel reminding you to "Drive left" for those brief moments when you almost forget. By the time we returned the car in Melbourne three days later, it was old hat-- 
we almost even appreciated the little traffic circles at every crossroads. The strangest part by far were the roadsigns, with graceful logos of kangaroos and koalas on yellow backgrounds warning us not to hit them when they crossed the road. (We never saw any while driving.) D was most amused by the ubiquitous neighborhood watch signs (right). Evidently, the Girl Scouts USA are responsible for keeping Australian neighborhoods safe.
Our first stop on our way out of Canberra was the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station, a startling set of four huge satellite dishes nestled in a small valley of the otherwise-sparsely-populated Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. The dishes are operated on behalf of NASA (yes, that would be our NASA) by the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, or the CDSCC, which, confusingly, is the same thing as the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station. NASA uses the dishes at the CDSCC to talk to all our spacecraft that are farther out than our moon. As the Earth turns the US away from the direction of NASA's deep-space probes once a day, the bulk of the planet's mass interferes with the signals going to and from NASA's facilities in the US and the spacecraft. Fortunately for us, when the US is facing away from NASA's probes, Australia is facing towards them, so the NASA uses the CDSCC to maintain continual contact.
Although we couldn't tour the complex itself, there was a small museum and a cafe with some good views of the impressive dishes. Chad, being a rocket scientist, already knew most of the history presented in the exhibits, but there was a sign posted telling us which spacecraft were talking to which dishes the day we visited. The big dish, for example-- the 70m dish (DSS-43) you can see behind Chad in the photograph here-- the big dish was talking to the crafts on or orbiting Mars right as Chad sat there! Oh, if only he could have hopped onto the data stream and hitched a ride. You, too, can check the tracking schedule for the dishes of the CDSCC right from your very own computer, just by clicking here.
After leaving the CDSCC, we headed south and west out of ACT (Australian Capital Territory), through NSW (New South Wales, the state which contains Sydney and also surrounds ACT), towards VIC (Victoria, the state which contains Melbourne). Almost by accident, we found ourselves driving through the town of Gundagai. Gundagai had no significance for us whatsoever except that a fellow Fulbrighter had just told us the day before about the "famous" 'Dog on the Tuckerbox'. Of course, we had to see what all the fuss was about, and that was why we had rented a car instead of taking the bus, right?
I'm afraid that I am unable to explain the phenomenon of the Dog on the Tuckerbox any better than what you see above. There was a general store there, and some other small displays, but they were all closed when we drove by, so we had to chalk the whole thing up to Australian roadside kitsch. Lord knows, we have enough back home that would be utterly incomprehensible to the foreign tourist!
After Gundagai, we spent the night at a hostel in Albury-Wodonga, a pair of towns on the Murray River at the border of NSW and Victoria. On the 20th, we drove along the Murray River until it widened into a narrow lake-- Lake Mulwala-- that was eerily populated with dead naked trees. 
We had to stop a number of times along Lake Mulwala so that D could take black-and-white photographs of the trees, which we later learned were River Red Gums, drowned when the river was dammed over 20 years ago.
We stopped briefly at the visitor's centre for the Murray River region, then left the river valley to head towards Bendigo, an old gold mining town in the "Goldfields" region of Victoria. We still had a day and a half with the car before it was due for return at the Melbourne airport, but the major distance had been covered by the time we pulled into the Elm Motel in Bendigo. That wasn't so bad, then-- maybe we could drive around the rest of Australia, too...