Just back from Canberra

Yesterday evening we returned home to Sydney from a trip down to Canberra for 3 days during the Australia Day long weekend. It was nice to be in the Nation’s capital during Australia Day and the ACT is the one remaining Australian State that I haven’t been to.

On the way down we stopped at a little town called Marulan. We walked down the main road and saw this lovely old building which was the Royal Hotel and one of two hotels in the town, but this one shut down in 1900.

Royal Hotel at Marulan

We continued on walking and there was an antiques shop there that had this lovely set of cricketers on the front lawn. We went in to ask how much they are and it turns out a local man handmakes the cricketers out of cement and he paints them and everything. They are $80 for each little cricketer or $450 for the set.

A little expensive for me to fork out right now but instead I bought this lovely figurine of hens and chicks for $25.

Chicken, hens and chicks figurine that I purchased from the antique shop in Marulan

I also saw this Singer advertisiement on the window of one old buildings along the main street.

Old Singer advertisement I saw in an old shop window in Marulan

We stopped again this time at Collector to get some petrol. There was this odd structure on one of the vacant blocks of land there. We have no idea what it is but it looks interesting.

A weird scuplture thing seen in Collector

It takes about 4 hours to get from Sydney to Canberra (that 4 hours included the 45 minutes we spent in Marulan looking around and the 10 minutes we spent in Collector getting petrol). I don’t know exactly what I was expecting but Canberra is completely different to how I imagined it. Basically once you are 5 minutes away from Parliament House or 5 minutes away from the metro area of Canberra just north of Parliament House (across Lake Burley Griffin) it is completely rural and semi-rural. There is a lot of bushland in Canberra which surprised me. I thought it would be a bit more built up. It appears that not many people actually live there. Probably 90% of the people that we saw there were tourists (mainly international tourists). There are international embassies scattered around the place. Its weird to me that they chose this place as the capital of Australia, but as Tim pointed out, it is half way between Melbourne and Sydney, so they decided to plonk it here half way to avoid any arguments between the two large cities.

On the itinerary:

Parliament House;
National Museum;
War Memorial;
National Gallery

On Saturday we visited Parliament House. I didn’t actually realise how imposing the building actually is. You can see the flag on top from almost anywhere in the metro area in Canberra.

The road to Parliament House

Tim standing in front of Parliament House

The Coat of Arms on top of Parliament House

Standing on top of Parliament House looking up

The foyer of Parliament House

The table where it all happens

The room where it all happens

An interesting feature is that in Canberra around Parliament House the roads are all in circles. In Sydney the roads are all in blocks of rectangles, so I found that really confusing. But when you think about it, having the area set up in circles (or Circuits as they are called) kind of does make sense because if you miss your turn you just keep going round the circuit and then make sure you turn the next time round.When we finished at Parliament House we drove down to the Yacht Club on Lake Burley Griffin to see if there was a cruise that we could take on the Lake. Unfortunately only one cruise leaves per day which we had already missed and the dinner cruise only runs on Sundays. I guess its such a small place that it doesn’t warrant them running a few cruises a day. Anyway, we sat on a bench by the Lake for an hour or so and then went back to the hotel (Statesman Hotel, see my review here) and had dinner and a few drinks before going to bed.

The next day (Sunday) we went to the National Museum and I was pleasantly surprised with how vast it all was. We spent 3 hours or so walking round the museum. The exhibitions were so interesting and I was very pleased that we went there.

Me standing in the car park of the National Museum

Foyer of National Museum

Tim standing in front of the mail box display

Tim standing in front of a huge tyre from a mining truck

Then we went to the War Memorial. Again, I was very impressed with how vast and interesting it was. It is more like a museum than a memorial. Unfortunately we couldn’t see all of the displays before it closed because we took about 2.5 hours walking around looking at all the different displays. The actual memorial itself is very impressive. Inside the domed building it is all made up of mosaics and there are very large depictions of various soldiers made out of mosaics and the stained glass windows also depict soldiers. I was incredibly impressed with this building and didn’t even know that anything like this existed here in Australia. Upon closing time, there is a soldier that comes out and plays the last post on the bugle then the gates to the memorial shut for the night.

War Memorial

Tim at the War Memorial looking back

List of names of those who were killed in the Wars. List stretches for about 150 metres and there is another list on the opposite side

Interesting fact: We saw Ron Berassi at the war memorial. He was there with a film crew.

Ron Berassi at the War Memorial

The following day (Australia Day, Monday) we went to the National Gallery. Just as I was pulling into the car park at the National Gallery 4 jet planes screamed passed overhead and scarred the hell out of me. I thought we were being bombed. Then as we were walking towards the entrance a huge blast echoed everywhere and again scarred the hell out of me. I went over to where the noise was coming from and it turned out that they were doing a 21 gun salute with 4 huge cannons over the other side of the Lake. I think this was all just for Australia Day, I don’t think they actually do that every day. Anyway, we went inside the Gallery and started to walk around and to my surprise, they have the super famous Jackson Pollock painting ‘Blue Poles’ on display there. I didn’t realise exactly how thick the paint on this painting was until I took a closer look – in some places the paint is 2 inches thick! Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside but could take photos of the outside sculptures.

Shiny pointy sculpture in the outside scuplture garden at the National Gallery

They’ve got quite a collection there at the National Gallery but personally I thought it could have been a little better with the types of artists it has on display. It has a lot of paintings but some of the artists are not as well known to non-arty people like me!