Day 17 Friday, March 29, 2019 Sydney to Canberra
We are at the Australian National War Memorial in Canberra, which was very moving. Under the dome was their beautiful Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We had a long, 14-hour tour to Canberra and back, but enjoyed the capital city and all we learned about the country. With so many hours on the bus to there and back, our driver/guide gave us a wealth of information.
We scurried out the Airbnb door very early and took an Uber to the tour meeting place. On the 4-hour drive to Canberra, the guide talked about the country and its history. We noted that he pronounced the capital "cain'-brah." Here are some notes I took along the way:
1) Melbourne and Sydney have always had an intense, "friendly" rivalry about which city is better (and whose sports teams are better).
2) Because of this rivalry, the new federation in the early 1900s decided it could not favor one or the other, so they created a new territory between the two for a brand new capital. (Sydney's territory is New South Wales, Melbourne's is Victoria, and Canberra's is called Australia Capital Territory, or ACT).
3) "Father of the Federation" is Sir Henry Parks.
4) James Cook found "The Great Southern Land" in 1770 after the Dutch had described it from earlier sailings. He landed at Botany Bay and recommended it, but when Admiral Phillips followed with the First Fleet in 1788, they couldn't find fresh water there so they moved on into Sydney Bay and the Tank Stream for fresh water.
5) Camels were introduced, and to this day, they roam freely in Western Australia and are exported to the Middle East.
6) They have the Lyrebird, which can realistically mimic just about any sound it hears, including chainsaws, camera shutters, tractors and car
alarms. They copy other bird and animal calls so perfectly that those birds and animals are completely fooled.
7) A group of kangaroos is a "mob".
8) Echidnas suck themselves into the ground, making them difficult to pick up, assuming you can touch their sharp spikes in the first place. The baby is called a "puddle."
9) Alpacas are desired because they chase foxes out from flocks of sheep.
We stopped for a potty/snack break along the way, and in the restaurant lobby was this 1954 Holden, the world's first utility car (like a Chevy El Camino, a car with a truck bed behind the cab). I'd never heard of Holden cars, but by the time our tours in Australia and NZ were over, we saw them everywhere. They are sort of like Chevies - a standard family car.
Our first stop in Canberra was the Mt. Ainslie Lookout, but it was pretty foggy. In the center of the photo is the Australian War Memorial, where we visited next. Beyond it is the Anzac Parade leading down to Lake Burley Griffin. In clear weather, the line of sight continues to the Old Parliament and finally the new Parliament House.
This is the War Museum from the front as we drove to a little cafe to purchase lunch before beginning our tour. Can you see the six flag poles?
They were at half staff in honor of the day being two weeks since the Christchurch tragedy. Yes, that happened in a different country, but when it comes to an Australian War Memorial, the two countries are closely linked via the Anzac forces in both world wars.
The names of all their war dead are inscribed on two of these long walls (see the photo at the top of this posting. These walls are behind the arches you can see on both sides behind Janet). The red flowers were available to place next to the names in memory.
Here's a close-up of the inscribed names.
That's the eternal flame. You can't really see it, but there's a flame there.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier room has the golden dome, stained-glass windows, and the grave in the center of the broad floor.
The back part of the museum were military equipment displays, such as this carrier plane.
From the steps of the War Memorial, and with the fog having lifted, we could see down the Anzac Parade and across the lake to the white building - the Old Parliament Building, and behind that the new Parliament House.
We next visited the National Museum, and it was quite the modern design.
A preserved platypus, an egg-laying mammal (like the echidna). They live only in Eastern Australia and Tasmania, in fresh water. They breathe air, but can remain under water for five minutes. It is one of the few species of venomous mammals, as the male has a spur on its hind foot that delivers a venom capable of causing severe pain to humans.
The world record fleece, 90 lbs, sheared from a sheep (named Chris!) that had strayed into the wild near Canberra and was not sheared for years. The animal was just weeks from death from having too much wool to move at all.
An admission in the museum of the horrible treatment of Aborigines starting in the 1820s when Lieutenant Governor Van Diemen decided to segregate them to allow the Europeans to take the lands they desired. Besides killing many Aborigines, they forced them onto islands in Bass Strait (between the mainland and Tasmania) where there were left to die.
A good portion of the museum was devoted to the Aboriginal culture. They have inhabited Australia for about 70,000 years, making them the oldest human culture on earth.
A maze of Aboriginal groupings, although they have never considered any piece of land to belong to any group. In other words, they have no permanent homes or holdings, instead migrating all their lives. Thus, the European concept of land ownership had no meaning to them when they were forced to discuss sharing or selling their lands.
Aboriginal handweaving samples.
More samples from Northern Queensland.
The many islands in the Torres Strait, north of the mainland and part of Queensland. There are indigenous peoples inhabiting the islands who have been there thousands of years. They are distinct from the Aborigines, but were treated just as badly by the Europeans. The Aborigines are believed to have migrated down from Asia and across these islands about 70,000 yrs ago. Interestingly, once in Australia, there is no evidence that they ever explored anywhere else or traveled back to Asia from whence they came.
Aboriginal headdress art pieces.
The modern style of the building's exterior.
We next crossed a bridge over the lake to tour the new Parliament House, with its sod roof and unique center flag pole. It opened in 1988, and has 4700 rooms.
If we turned around and looked back, we saw the Old Parliament Building in the foreground, the Anzac Parade in the distance (across the lake), the War Memorial at the Parade's end, and Mt. Ainslie behind that. It was at the top of that peak where we first stopped earlier in the day to get views down, but it was too foggy.
When you walk through the front doors of the Parliament House, you're in the Marble Foyer. Pretty modern! Pretty woman!
Beyond the Foyer was this conference room, The Great Hall, with its wooden floors and modern-art tapestry at the far end. We saw photos when this room was completely full for a state dinner banquet.
On display was this official document signed by Queen Victoria in 1900, on this very desk -- the Royal Commission of Assent to the Australian Commonwealth.
Their House chamber, for their 151 Representatives. We're sitting in the gallery.
They had large paintings of every one of their Prime Ministers, and our guide felt compelled to tell us many details about every single one of them. After about the first eight, Janet and I departed this to look at other displays that were far more interesting, such as...
...this explanation of the official government apology in 2008 to Australia's Indigenous Peoples. It names the Aborigines and the Torres Strait Islanders, who were mistreated by official government policies from 1910 to 1970.
And here is the actual apology document. I asked to purchase a copy from the gift shop as we left, but they were not for sale. Still, the clerk went into a separate room and brought me a copy for free, which we now have mounted in our home to demonstrate what governments are capable of doing to admit past wrongdoings.
The Senate, where they have 76 Senators.
On our departure from town, we passed by this Australian-American Memorial - "The Eagle". We then drove through Embassy Row, and many of the buildings were uniquely designed to represent the country's character, which made it interesting. The U.S. Embassy was by far the largest, and was completely surrounded by tall barbed wire fencing.
About a mile from town, we passed fields where we saw about five lone kangaroos standing. Thus, we finally got to see kangaroos in the wild.
On the drive back, when we got to the town of Goulburn, we stopped at the Big Merino. It's a 50-ft-tall concrete sheep, which the locals call Rambo. It's actually a souvenir shop, although I know that's hard to believe. Haha
We arrived back into Sydney at about 9:30 pm, and the driver wanted to be a nice guy and drive each of the parties to their own hotels. That turned out to be bad for us, since we were last on the list. In hindsight, we wished we'd have left the bus at the first stop and taken an Uber. Instead, we didn't get back to our apartment until 10:30. When he did drop us off, he did it a long ways from our apartment and we had to walk quite a ways.
Oh well, we enjoyed the day. We went to bed shortly after getting home.
