Canberra Hotels
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The Capital
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After spending most of the day around the Twelve Apostles, I drove the remainder of the Great Ocean Road before turning back east. This would be as far west as I would have time to go, on this trip at least- I originally planned to make it to Adelaide, but decided I had enough of living out of a van. I remembered this audio clip (and was able to download it) in my head:
On the way back through Melbourne had to stop at the
Melbourne Institute of Technology to get a T-shirt, but they didn't have any since the school is relatively new- but I did manage to get a parking ticket even though I put money into the meter. Sweet.
I did stop briefly at some interesting sites along the way. One was a 'museum' detailing the last stand of Ned Kelly and his gang- really a kind of hokey but extremely entertaining, somewhat animated, sequence of rooms filled with moving mannequins that a guy had single-handedly built (and was still working on) out of pure admiration I guess. It is mentioned in Bill Bryson's well known Australia book which I read, but didn't remember this reference. It was.... entertaining and imaginative are probably the best words to describe it.
I also drove through a town with a submarine parked in its center- it had changed it's name from 'Germanton' to 'Holbrook', a submarine captain in WWI who led a daring raid. It was odd as this town is probably 2 hours to the nearest coastline, but I guess who wanted to live in Germanton when fighting Germany?
I stopped short of Canberra for the night, slept in my van down by the river, and arrived the next morning to what I had heard was 'the most boring city in Australia'. Probably since the site for the city was chosen as a compromise capitol location between Melbourne and Sydney and was designed around an artificially dammed lakeside from the very beginning.
Much like D.C. in many ways. Went to the entertaining Australia museum and the Parliament building, all very large, ornate, and full of symbolism for modern Australia. One cool thing about the Parliament building, it looked partially underground since it had grass growing on slopes right up and over the roof, and the chambers made good use of natural light and coloring.
It was apparent how the city earned it's reputation since its not a naturally developed population center, and its hard to walk everywhere (although there are a lot of parks, good for finding good spots to sleep) and lacks some character. At least it's not unbearably hot and humid in the summer like our capital!
I spent the next day at the colossal War Memorial. It had some great displays, particularly one of three Japanese mini-subs that were deployed into Sydney Harbour in WWII. Two were sunk and both crews committed suicide- the third sunk outside the harbour and was just recently found.
They had original aircraft that had flown in combat, including a Lancaster bomber, a P-51, a rocket powered Messerschmitt aircraft, the first operational jet the Me 262, a Zero, and some Australian made bombers. It covered wars up until the Korean conflict mainly and detailed some of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and in Japanese POW camps. Very solemn museum and I left pretty disgusted with war and the levels people can sink to. Which I guess is some of the reason behind memorials such as these.
A further note on the damn flies everywhere- there have still been plenty and I've heard from the various Aussies I've asked either a) they are really bad this year and b) oh no its always like this. The latter was usually around cattle areas though- which surround this city. The fly is a different species, called the Australian bowfly, obviously naturally selected to be the most annoying fly in the world. I swear they don't go after foodv or water- I think they derive sustenance from narrowly avoiding my attempts to squash them. It has to be entertaining seeing me walk down the road boxing my ears, knocking my sunnies off (Australian for sunglasses), and slapping my shoulders to no effect. I've actually caught some in flight not due to my prowess but rather the pure density of them buzzing around.
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