The walk right next to Lake Burley-Griffin near the National Gallery of Australia
Just a quick quote from Bill Bryson, the author of In a Sunburned Country:
"The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian. The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn't get much better than this."
Yep, that sums up Australia. I have yet to find a place here that I can't stand or I hate. Everything is just beautiful. Canberra, for example. I was blessed enough to travel there this past weekend. I absolutely loved it. Here's a video I took summing up how beautiful Canberra is and how much it made me miss Autumn.
We hoped to leave Sydney at 7 am, but Alex, the Aussie I've been dating here, had so much work to do that he was up super late. Instead, we ended up leaving Sydney at 9 am, two hours later than we had planned. The drive to Canberra was uneventful, we just talked and listened to our music (I got Alex hooked on the song "If I Die Young" by the Band Perry). We didn't plan our petrol breaks well because we almost ran out, thankfully we made it the station with 17 km to spare! There, Alex had to put more oil in the car and he was lucky enough to have one of the local guys give him a hand (The guy who helped him had hands just like you, Dad!).
We were about to run out of petrol... Only 17 km until empty!
View inside the Australian War Memorial
We made it to Canberra around one or so, we made the decision to see the Australian War Memorial first, since the tour was 90 minutes and they had one starting at 1:30 pm we could catch. Alex is huge on doing tours, and he's right, this one was incredible. Our tour guide told us all about WWI mainly, and about the ANZACs (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). Before I came here, I thought Australia had never been in any wars, turns out they've been in all the same wars as us. Similar to our D-Day, the Australians had ANZAC day on April 25, 1915. By some faulty intelligence or error, the Australians landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula of Turkey, the one place that was guarded by Turkish forces. Some 8,000 Australians were slaughtered, and those that survived the initial attack had to rough it on the mountains of the coast with minimal supplies. It was a huge failure, and it was a turning point in Australia's relationship with Britain.
Alex playing in the "submarine"
View of Parliament House from the Australian War Memorial
The flowers added next to the names of the lost soldiers in WWI
Once we finished up playing around the War Memorial (They had a section for kids that we had to go explore/play in), Alex had to go finish up some work (He had a 2500 word essay due at midnight!). As interesting and entertaining it would be to sit with him while he did his work, I took the alternate route: I wanted to go walk around Canberra.
It was the perfect time, right at sunset. I'm so glad I got to see Canberra in the fall; it was unnerving how much it made me miss Missouri. Yes, I actually missed Missouri! The leaves don't change in most of Australia because most of the trees are eucalyptus, and therefore, don't lose their leaves. But, they had trees just like home in Canberra, and they were all changing color. The best part was all the leaves on the ground... I think that's what made it smell like home. I found a section of trees (the picture from the very top) where I could walk through the leaves, hear them crunching under my Uggs, take in the water, and breathe in the smell of autumn.
Selfie around sunset around Lake Burley-Griffin
Let me just elaborate on just how cool Canberra is. It was built in 1912, after Walter Burley Griffin, an American architect, won a competition with his plan for the city. It's in a hexagonal shape, and it's brilliant; everything just lines up. It's so cute! After my musings near the lake, I called up Alex because I was cold and hungry, and we attempted to head up to Mount Black for sunset. We barely missed it, so instead Alex showed me his uni he attended his 1st and 2nd year, ANU. After a bit of sightseeing, we went downtown for dinner at Gus's; it was soooo good! We ate outside which would have been rough (it was in the single digits at night!), luckily, they had heaters and candlelight to set the mood. Once I was thoroughly stuffed with an unbelievable amount of carbohydrates, we went to get some more at Coco Black; Alex got a super rich hot chocolate and I had some chocolate ice cream to accompany our $2 a piece chocolates.
We got back to the hotel around 9; Alex had work to do,so I just took advantage of the bathtub and went to bed all toasty and warm, we had a bunch of places we had to get to tomorrow.
Hoping to catch the 9:30 am tour of the National Museum of Australia, we checked out bright and early at 9 am. Being the only two people on this tour, we got to ask as many questions as we wanted. Australia has one interesting history. My favorite story of the whole tour was this: apparently, a convict in South Australia escaped from his crew, he came across a grave site where he found spears, that he thought he could use for hunting. When he ran into a clan of Aborigines later, they thought he was a reincarnation of one of their dead, so they welcomed him into their clan. He stayed with them for 30 years, and took part of the negotiations over land in Melbourne with the British. He had been so immersed in their society that he had almost forgotten English, but it all came back when he helped with negotiations. Pretty cool story, huh?
Alex "Tim-Tebowing"-at my request- at the National Museum of Australia
We grabbed some breakfast in the historic, cute part of town, it sort of reminded me of Kirkwood, Mo. I finally tried eggs benedict, and I LOVED it! We made our way to the Parliament House to catch the 1 pm tour.
Looking out over the mountains at the top of Parliament House
We were lucky enough to have an amazing tour guide that knew an insane amount of information on the Australian political system. Here's some things I learned about the ridiculously complicated Australian government:
Parliament is broken into two houses: the House of Representatives with 150 representatives from 150 different areas divided by equal population, and the Senate that has 12 senators for each of the 7 states.
Both houses are equal in terms of power, but the majority in the House of Representatives creates the government, and within the government is the Prime Minister (Julia Gillard), who the people do not directly vote for!
Parliament House has many interpretations in its design. People are suppose to be above government which is why you can go above the Parliament and sit on top of it. The red rock/soil outside of Parliament is suppose to represent the red soil of the outback with the fountain out front to represent a billabong which was a traditional place of gathering for Aboriginals.
The Head of State is the Queen of England, and technically, she can come in and do whatever the hell she wants.
Once we finished our tour of the Parliament House, we checked out the High Court which is the highest court of the land. It was a very interesting building, and we were the only ones there, so Alex asked a million and one questions, and this is what I gained from it:
There are seven justices on the High Court, and two of them serve on the appeal court to deem the case worthy of the High Court's attention
Criminal and constitution issues can appear before them
View overlooking the mountains to the west on Canberra from Mount Ainslie
We caught the last few rays of the day from the lookout on Mount Ainslie. I was once again filled with this feeling I get sometimes over here; it's this feeling almost like fear/sadness mixed together, I realize that I may never see this beautiful place again or be in this same moment ever again. It's the weirdest emotion. It was a perfect weekend and the best time to see Canberra in all its fall glory.
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