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Published: April 29th 2007
Debbie at Cook Memorial
It's not always blue skies in OZ. We left Melbourne for Canberra at 7 in the morning. A short coach trip later and we arrived just after 3 in the afternoon. We got to our hostel quite easily, probably the only place we did find easily in the place. The hostel included a spa, swimming pool & sauna. Plush! Unfortunately the sauna was broken, the spa was cold and the swimming pool I could've jumped over. Never-the-less we still went in the spa/pool for a bit.
On our first full day we decided we'd go to both old & new parliament. We worked out how to get there, it looked easy but as soon as you start walking around Canberra for a while you start to doubt your sense of direction as it's bigger than it seems. We did eventually get there and we visited the Cook memorial (a water jet that fires water high upto the sky). Old Parliament (used from 1927-1988) was supposed to be temporary but was still used for over 50 years and is an interesting place where you can learn how government works here. It's a bit like how it works in the UK. There are two houses, the house of
Cockatoos at Senate Park
This was Debbie's photo. All mine were just grass as I tried to get too close to them. representatives and the senate. Unlike the UK they are both elected. The senate acts as reviewers of laws originating from the house of reps. The senate themselves cannot create laws (I think...). Anyway the building's interior looks similar to the houses of parliament, green for the representatives and red for the senate. It was quite a contrast to the new parliament which cost A$1.1 billion. The new parliament goes for a more modern feel even the colours of the house are tinted rather than simply being red and green. After visiting both parliaments and walking round the gardens (full of cockatoos) we decided to try and see some of the embassies as they're supposed to be some quite impressive buildings. Again it looked easy to get to them on the map but we found ourselves surrounded by the equivalent of an A road without anyway of getting over it so we had to backtrack. We had a quick look at a few (the UK one is pretty dull, Papa New Guinea and China's re good) before attempting to find our way back to the hostel which only took about an hour as we were pretty sure where we were going.
Judge Mike
You're all GUILTY!!!!!!! I've found my calling... Our other full day we had a bit of an easier time getting to the national museum. After a few hours there we also visited the national film sound archive where you can see clips of Oz tv shows & films going way back when. The nice thing about these places is they're free as was new parliament (old parliament cost 40 pence!).
For anyone visitng Canberra, I'd agree with Bill Bryson. You should take a good map, compass, several days provisions and a mobile phone with a number of a rescue service. Despite all this we found our way back to the bus depot to catch a coach. Next stop Sydney.
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