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Published: September 26th 2015
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Australian War Memorial
Norman Charles Smeath - Georgi's uncle - died on active service.
It was planned to have some quiet time with Catherine and Ben but that was a little tricky as at least one of us felt less than 100% at some stage while we were in Canberra,
Day 1 we had a late start and then lunch with Catherine at a local cafe before she went to work. Then we went to the Telstra Tower, Canberra Botanic Gardens (briefly) and then to the Bank (which was next door to where Catherine worked). Great bank - they just keep giving us money when we ask for it!
Day 2 was the Library, the Portrait Gallery and National Gallery. The library has "treasures" on display and they did not disappoint. An historic exhibition by William Strutt (including paintings of Burke and Wills as they left Melbourne and Bushrangers in St. Kilda Road) was worthwhile seeing, however the icing on the cake was the interactive map / chart linked to the journal of James Cook. This was really interesting as we had only recently been in the town of 1770 and heard a little about his visit. Now, we could read all about the Cook landing to repair the Endeavour directly from the
Captains journal. Georgi loved the charcoal drawings by Strutt. The Portrait Gallery was OK but we rushed a little so that we had sufficient time for the National Gallery. Unfortunately, we didn't know that the National Gallery was in the middle of a re-hang (read renovation of artworks) and about half of the facility was closed off. The section that was closed off was mostly related to Australian art so it was quite a disappointing visit.
Because we finished our cultural afternoon early, we thought we would visit the wetlands to see if we could spy some birds. There were a lot of detours (due to construction of a new hotel or something) and when we got closer to the wetlands there was only walking / cycle access. We decided it was too cold and windy to go walking for birds.
Day 3 It was shopping in the morning to get ready to leave Canberra, we went to Dickson. We had a lovely lunch at an italian restaurant and then decided we had time to go to the War Memorial. The War Memorial caters well for travellers with dedicated parking for buses and caravans which was nice -
Telstra Tower Lookout
View of the city and lake we didn't mind walking a bit further. Georgi wanted to find her uncles name on the honour roll and place a red poppy next to it for remembrance. That took a bit of searching but finally we found it. The engraving was right up top so she needed a boost to get her high enough. We toured the war memorial for a few hours and thought the displays were quite impresive. There is a newish one on finding HMAS Sydney.
Ben had to work late so we picked him up from work and went to a steak restaurant for dinner. The last supper in Canberra was toasted and then we had an early night ready to move on to somewhere warmer.
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