Canberra the Chinese way

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G'day! Or should it be ni hao?
Taking advantage of my strategic location near to Sydney's Chinatown, I found a travel agent offering very cheap day-trips. Why not go to Canberra? And their price for it was 4 times less expensive than similar offers with other travel agents. I even checked the price of a train or coach journey to Canberra by public transport and even that was more expensive! A real steal deal I found.
The only thing was that it was intended for Chinese tourists and that the guide was only going to speak Chinese. But never mind!
I must add that Canberra is about 4 hours away from Sydney, so the day was something like 8 hours driving to Canberra and back, and less than 3 hours actually visiting Canberra.
When Australia became a federation in 1901, it was decided that it needed a national capital. But Sydney wouldn't let it be Melbourne and Melbourne didn't want it to be Sydney. So they decided to build a new city and architect Walter Burley Griffin got to design it.
Canberra is not that big, but is open and green with many parks. It also felt a bit empty. Are there only civil servants living there? But still nice.
Our guide ushered us around town, to the embassies district, into the Parliament House and finally to the Australian War Memorial. And he did explain a few things in English, just for me, although even if I don't understand Chinese, I can say that he speaks much better Chinese than English.
No worries.
Oli

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Photos

Pampa-style scenery through the window
Driving took most of the day, but the scenery wasn't always the same fortunately.

The Australian Senate
The Australian Parliament was modeled on the British Parliament in Westminster. So the Senate is predominantly red like the House of Lords and the House of Representatives is green like the House of Commons. They were having a session in the House of Representatives, debating about "Indigenous Education", which we could attend, but no pictures.

View from the Australian War Memorial down Anzac Promenade
You can see the Old Parliament (the white building) and the newer Parliament House behind it with the huge flag on top of it.
The Memorial and museum attached to it were very interesting; even some of the Chinese tourists found the time too short in it.

Group picture
Our guide is on the right with the brown jacket, the two other at the front were from Shanghai and the two at the back were Chinese from Jakarta.