Canberra, Australia

I woke up at 6am, got a shower and did my journaling for the previous day. We went down to breakfast (continental) about 7:30am, and then walked around the block to catch the bus into Canberra city (our hotel was in Kingston). We only had to walk one block over and one block down to catch the Hop-On Hop-Off tour bus. John, our driver, told us a ton of things about the area which were really interesting! Canberra has 101 suburbs, with the city itself having 360,000 people. He also explained how the capital of Australia was picked to be at Canberra because it was between Sydney and Melbourne (and they couldn’t decide which one to choose). The design of the city was made based upon a world-wide contest. The winner was from Chicago and his design was heavily influenced by Washington, D.C.

The first stop we got off on was the Australian War Memorial. We could have spent all day there! It was an awesome museum and memorial. From the front of the memorial, away from the memorial, is Lake Bauerly Griffin. Across the lake, further away from the memorial, is the Old Parliament and (new) Parliament. At the base of the steps up to the memorial was a white monument inscribed with the words encapsulating Australia's sentiment regarding the combined forces of the Australian and New Zealand Army Core (ANZAC): “Their Name Liveth For Evermore.”

Between the memorial and the lake is the ANZAC Parade: a two-lane drive with monuments on either side of the drive dedicated to the veterans of all the wars fought by the forces of Australia and New Zealand.

The top floor had a memorial dome at the opposite end of the entrance, with two halls down each side leading to the dome, with columns and in the center a pool. The walls along the side halls had the names of all those lost in the wars, and stuck into the cracks between the panels were poppies – their remembrance flower because it is what grows on the WWI battlefields in France.

The dome had four granite pillars, one for each of the major wars fought up until the current war; four stain glass windows, each with four people depicting an aspect of the various Wars; and in the center floor, a tomb for the unknown ANZAC soldier. It was beautiful and horribly sad to see. They have already begun a section for the war in Iraq.

To the left of the entrance was the museum itself. It was three floors, combining artifacts, dioramas, and paintings, all about the various wars fought by ANZAC. They had planes from WWI and WWII, a submarine from WWII torpedoed in the Sydney Harbour, trucks, uniforms, artillery and guns, and a ton of other things. We had only about an hour at the museum before the bus picked us up.

Our next stop was Parliament. The building was built into the side of the hill, topped by a triangular metal “flag poll” topped by a flag the size of a double-decker bus. The inside of the front entrance was made of marble with two staircases on either side of the hall; around the top edges of the first floor, below the railing, were some beautiful wood portraits/pictures.

The Parliament houses an original Magna Carter, which we got to see! It was awesome!!!! We went into the House of Representatives (the room was green, with the attendants all dressed in green as well). The speaker, when we walked in, was giving a report and said that Australia has to support the US in the war on terror, and that Afghans needed to be helped and their level of living needs to be improved. It was so cool to come in and hear him speaking about that! Next, we went across the hall to the Senate (the room was pink, with the attendants all dressed in pink as well). We listened for a while as various people spoke about bills they supported.

We caught the bus and got out to walk down by the lake. The view was awesome because you could see both Old Parliament and the Australian War Memorial.

We waited for the water fountain / spout to go off at 2pm, but it didn’t. Our next stop was going to be the Royal Botanic Gardens, but John, the bus driver, was talking about the Australian National Museum, so we decided to go there instead.

On the way to the museum John drove through a neighborhood that houses 20% of the embassies; each embassy was indicative of the country (culture) it came from. The US embassy was red brick with white trim (very East Coast), and has the most buildings and land of any embassy in Australia.

The Australian National Museum building was kinda cool, but didn’t fit in with the rest of the city. There is a giant loop that looks like a roller coaster (represents the Dreaming from the Aboriginal history) and an archway off the building (in the shape of the keel of the Australian boat that won America’s Cup). We went through two of the major exhibits, one of which consisted of Aboriginal artwork and the other was called The Journey, consisting of various artifacts from Australians who immigrated to the country. We also saw Circa, a movie in sounds and pictures made up from the various artifacts from the exhibits. The movie circled through four rooms, each decorated for the various area, with several screens in each room that showed the artifacts and movies for each “era”: Origins and Aborigines; Exploration and Settlement; Innovation and Wars; and the Modern Age. It was pretty cool!

Well, the Hop-On Hop-Off bus dropped us off and we caught the City bus back to Victor Lodge. However, we missed our stop. We had been picked up on Eyre Street, but we didn’t realize that the bus dropped off on Giles Street. So, we rode the bus all the way out to Garran. We had to wait for about ten minutes for a bus back to the City. In all, the afternoon bus ride went from what should have been 20 minutes to 1 ½ hours! We ended up leaving Canberra much later that we had hoped for our drive to Cooma.

Well, it was my turn to drive…on the left! It went very well. My only problem was with the turn signal! We ended up getting into Cooma after dark, so we had to see Centennial Park the next morning. We checked into the High Country Motel, and got a suite because there was a mix up and they weren’t that busy!