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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“From the first blink the honorable members have only 5 minutes to cart their arse on down to their seats.” |
Canberra is Australia's national capital (not Sydney). It's not a huge city (pop 330,000) but it is pretty spread out. Let me explain why.
Canberra is a designed city. And a new one at that; I think it was designed just in the 1970's. The plan was for it was to make it feel like the entire city was located inside a park. There's lots of greenspace between everything. Wide grassy boulevards seem to be everywhere. Driving through the city you can't help but feel, "Where's the city?".
The parliment building forms the core of the city. It's on a small hill so you get nice views from all sides. Well, not "sides" really, since the street structure around the parliament is a series of circles. Radiating out of the circles are street spokes that point to important landmarks of the city; the War Memorial and the old parliament to name just a few.
It was a miserably rainy day so we thought it best to spend it indoors. And since we were in the nations capital, we figured, "Why not tour around the parliament?". Neither of us are hugely interested in politics, but we did learn some interesting things nonetheless. For instance, we learned that there are a total of 2500 identical clocks throughout the building. Each one has a small red light in one corner and a small green light in the other. When it's time for members to go to their respective chambers the lights will blink. Then the countdown is on. From the first blink the honorable members have only 5 minutes to cart their arse on down to their seats. If they don't get there in time, too bad, so sad: the doors are locked, and they've missed their chance to vote (or do whatever else is in the country's best interest, like name calling towards the opposite party members). Apparently it's very common to see a distinguished looking man or woman literally barelling through the buildings to get there before the end of the 5 minutes. And you thought politics was boring!
Also in Canberra is the amazing Australian National War Memorial. I (Michael) am personally very interested in war history. Heather, not so much. To her credit, she did like it for the first 2 hours, but to her, everything started to look the same after that. I spent a further 2 hours looking around after she told me she'd wait in the car (I had her permission). There really was too much to take in though. I would have liked to have spent another 12 hours in there to best appreciate all that there was to see and learn about. The Aussies have a short but proud military history and this memorial certainly gives those men and women in uniform the respect they deserve. Definitely worth a visit.
Michael and Heather
previous travel blog entry
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