The nations capital. My first visit here and I’m feeling excited. After a week in Sydney we’ve got some schooling to catch up on but then we are surrounded by such great educational places to visit I think we just need to pack in as much as we can and the work books aren’t going anywhere.
The caravan park is pretty close to all the sights and a mixture of caravan park and cabins. It had a lovely pool and new amenities, parrots and birds galore and a few mountain bike tracks around it for Ken.
Totally spoilt for choice of great things to see and we’re not going to be able to see it all. Parliment House was the most obvious one not to be missed, so we headed there first. What a fabulous afternoon, fabulous tour and fabulous building. The artistry and pride that went into all the little details of construction and finishing touches is magnificent. It would be hard to not feel a swell of national pride.
It was of course a great experience visiting the House of Representatives, The Senate and learning how our government functions, however it was the building and symbolism of every detail that just blew my mind. 2018 was the 30th anniversary year of the building and to celebrate a LEGO model of parliment house was commissioned. It was more than just a model of the building but included many noteworthy moments of history and characters from over the years.
It was awesome, the kids loved it and I learnt something new. You can build LEGO as a profession, this can be a career path is you wish, and your job title, Master Model Builder.
Next was Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre. What a fabulous day. So pleased the girls got to come here. So much learning, so much fun. The staff were all mad crazy scientists and their passion was infectious.
The National Library was another great visit with many national treasures to behold. We joined a couple of tours. Having been following the voyages and discoveries of Captain James Cook and seeing that the library had an exhibition we couldn’t not go along. The other tour was in the Treasures Gallery. A fastinating collection of documents, artifact, painting, tales and treasures from Australias young history.
Cook’s Journal on Endeavour 
This was all the world knew of ‘Australia’ before Cook discovered our East Coast
With a drive by of the Australian War Memorial we drove up Mount Ainslie to a lookout to take in the views of the nations capital and reflect on the what a lucky country we are.
Our last day in Canberra we visited old Parliament House – the Museum of Australian Democracy. Our timing was brilliant with the instillation of a new exhibit of political cartoons tilted, Curiouser & Curiouser with a Alice in Wonderland, down the rabbit whole theme going on. While the girls were not particularly taken with the cartoons (Ken and I enjoyed them) but they were thrilled with the dress ups.
We did another tour of all the important rooms and it was indeed an old building and easy to see why the new Parliament House was required.
Still fastinating and well preserved. Following the tour we explored the next level of the building on our own and easily filled the rest of the day in various play spaces, rooms dedicated to creating your own Zine (mini magazine on any topic) and more dresses ups. This time accompanied with the inspirational story of the famous figures the dress ups depicted. Top day!
Canberra was ace! Makin me proud of our nation …… well for a moment anyway, till I think of the appalling behaviour and shenanigans some of our politicians engaged in. Ahh, the dark n’ light n’ various shades of grey of the human condition.
