Randiandersen's travel blogs:
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Day 80 - Canberra
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The days are all muddled now. I'm just gonna talk about the cool things we did. How's that sound?
Let's pretend today's the day we went to Canberra (pronounced "CANbra" all one word with the emphasis on the first syllable). H'okay. So we had to get up really early to go to Canberra. It's a three-hour ride by the schedule's reckoning, actually more like 4 when you get right down to driving it. We left really early, like seven, which isn't really that early by my recent standards but then I'm weird, and Frank promised to treat us to "pies" on the way over. We made a stop at a really beautiful little town - I don't remember the name of it now, of course - and the cutest little shop you ever saw. Or should I say the most darling place, being in Australia... anyway we made a stop for meat pies and Frank did indeed buy us each one (we were responsible for our own drinks) and they were amazing! Very Australian, according to Frank, and very English as well, as I now knew the two were so closely connected. I had a chicken pie (makes me think of Chicken Run) and they gave you this sauce to put on it, who knows what but it was good, and it was so hot I had to wait like ten minutes before I could eat it. Anyway. We stopped longer than we intended to but that's not why it took us so long; it's just a really long drive.
We were very late for our tour of the Australia Film Archive but Frank had called ahead and they were putting us on with a group of school kids, so we'd still sort of get our tour. When we got there they weren't there yet and they couldn't get a hold of them, so we started without them and we started with the things they wouldn't necessarily show the kids, mostly because they were too boring rather than too graphic or gory or anything. I can't remember all that we watched, though. A couple of commercials and ads, and clips of a movie or show or two. And then the kids got there and we watched more kid-oriented things, like this awesome show called "Skippy" about a kangaroo that had taken to talking to people and hanging around them like a wild pet. Something like Lassie. He talked in clicks and the people could all understand him, and he'd jump in the back of the station wagon and go with them. It's like Lassie only worse, and the lady giving the talk said people definitely thought Aussie kids all had Kangaroo pets and rode them to school because of this darn show. All the way back to the bus the people in my group were clicking at each other and making up funny lines like part of the show. After the talk we went into the museum part, and took a quick look around although we couldn't stay as long as we would have if we'd had the whole day. There was so much to watch and so much to read that there was no way to get through everything. They did have some cool hands-on stuff, though; a projector that you could wind and those cool frame-animation machines that you put pictures in and spin and watch as the picture moves as each frame goes by. They had lots of old props and clips from films and interviews and things. We had a few minute in the shop and then we were off again. Our bus driver Mark was going to take us for a tour around the city.
So we got into the city of Canberra and our first stop was a visitor center where our bus-driver-turned-guide Mark took us straight to the back where we pressed the button on an automated visual prompt and watched as the whole horizontal scale model of the city lit up and began to speak. Canberra is the political capital of Australia, built and designed to be so because Sydney and Melbourne (MELbn) couldn't quit arguing over who should get to be the capital. Canberra is right in between. The model told us all about how the city was conceived and built, a giant triangle between important buildings. It described the strategic locations of official houses and actual homes of important officials, embassies, governmental meeting places, monuments, and so on. After watching the model, mesmerized by the blinking and running lights and the voice that seemed to come out of the lights themselves, we got back in the bus to drive out into the actual city and see it for ourselves.
Because of the triangular organization of the place, it's nearly impossible to navigate unless one has been there before, and we were thankful to have Mark showing us around as well as telling us what we were looking at. We drove down monument row, or that's what I would call it - monuments on both sides, monuments to various wars Australian troops fought in, monuments given by ally countries and copies of monuments given them by Australia, etc etc. I took pictures out one window and Liz the other, and of course we didn't actually ever trade pictures because we are just not that on top of things. After the monuments we drove around to the embassies, and took a look and some pictures of all the different countries that were represented in this one area of the city. We didn't see them all of course but most of the most influential countries were all concentrated in one spot. Some of them you could tell by the building itself, like China was a pagoda, and some you could tell by the flag flying high above the building, but some it took all the way to the front of the building and the sign or lettering on the front before we had it figured out. The United States Embassy, however - that one was easy. It was easily a couple of acres of land or more, manicured and spacious but not beautiful, and a massive brick building taking up much more of the space than was probably necessary. There were at least half a dozen American flags flying. I was not surprised but a little ashamed. I knew the number of people the building was supporting or might need to support at any one time did not necessitate that much building or land. China has many many more people and a much closer and more significant relationship with Australia than the US does and they didn't need that ostentatious thing, they just had a simple pagoda. Whatever.
We saw some other sights of the city and then had to be off again for home. Mark had promised us kangaroos and he didn't fall short of his promise. After a couple of tries at the sure-fire places to see them fell through, we headed out on the highway for home and it wasn't long before the radical slowing down of the bus was met by screaming and yelling from all sides. We spilled out, Liz cutting off her phone call with her parents and all of us reaching for our cameras, and lined the fence. There were at least two dozen kangaroos, and to be perfectly honest my first thought was, "they're elk!" - they're massive herd animals that eat grass and hang out in big numbers in fields and occasionally run out in front of cars. They're just like elk. Only way cooler. The longer we stayed the more nervous they became, and began to move off, but not before we all got more than our share of pictures, especially me, having the best camera. I even got a video of them all moving, I mean jumping away. I hope it will load on this site because it's really cool. It's a bit long though, so it's big and it might not load. Anyway. The kangaroos were amazing!!!
We stopped for dinner at a buffet on the outskirts of Sydney. The food was not great but it was good, it beat the ship's food but only by a little. We were way later getting back than we'd hoped and I hoped Mark wasn't doing too much outside his payable contract and that he'd be all right getting the bus back and doing his next tour the next day. Frank was staying on the ship that night because it was a late night and another early morning, so we all just said good night and see you in the morning and went to bed because we were exhausted. Most of us had even slept on the bus. More thumbnails ...
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