We’ve been in Canberra, visiting with my Uncle Lou since Monday evening. As has been the case with each of our stops, this has been filled with activity.
Tuesday’s itinerary started off rather vague. We had a plethora of options that centered around Parliament House – but we ended up spending a good part of the afternoon only at the new Parliament House. We passed the old building on the way there, but were pleased to join a tour of the new building when we entered. It was a fascinating tour, one that kept the attention of Alexandra, the interest of the adults, both the Americans (there was another American from Philly on the tour too!) and even the Australians. While the building was actually opened about two months before I was in Canberra the last time (20 years ago), it’s still called the “new” Parliament House. Uncle Lou had never taken a tour of the building either, so he also appreciated learning all about the building.
One of the neatest parts of the building is the fact that it’s basically built within a hill or mound – so Alexandra enjoyed practicing her cartwheels on the grass by the roof of the building. Fathom that!
On Wednesday, we had decided to visit Cockington Green – a garden style park that contains beautiful miniature representations of buildings from around the world. We went there in 1982 when I was five years old, and again in 1988 when I was eleven. It’s a tradition of sorts, I think, in my family, to go there when visiting Canberra. Alexandra had a good time looking at the buildings and at all the little people and what they were doing. It was a bit of a struggle to get her to slow down to really see what was going on in the scenes, but she enjoyed it. We got to ride on the steam train (the same train that I rode on in both my previous visits) and Alexandra pointed out numerous things for me to photograph – so many, in fact, that the one visit resulted in a full memory card.
When I transferred the photos to my computer later that evening, I was amazed to see photos that were practically identical to some I’d taken when I was 11. I’m still a bit creeped out by that.
After visiting the Garden there, Alex, Uncle Lou, and I walked across the street to the National Dinosaur Museum. While it didn’t have an extensive collection of artifacts, I thought it was an interesting way of looking at the dinosaurs, in that it focused on the dinosaurs that had been discovered in Australia. Although we may have seen exhibits of locally discovered dinosaurs in other places, none of them have displayed them in quite such a manner.
Thursday was a sunny day and so we decided to venture out to Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve to see what animals we could see. There was a massive bush fire in that area five years ago, wiping out a large number of the animals, including almost all of the koalas. Almost because the day after the fires had decimated the bush, one koala was found high up in a Ribbon Gum Tree – in shock and with severe dehydration and burns. The koala was nursed back to health over the course of years and dubbed “Lucky” by the people of Tidbinbilla and all of Canberra. After two years, she was well enough to be returned to the Reserve, though not fully released into the wild. While Lucky is now in permanent retirement (and so no longer able to be viewed by the public), the park has recently acquired seven koalas for their Eucalypt Forest. We went on a leisurely walk through that forest in the hopes of spotting one of them, but weren’t fortunate to see one. We went back towards the visitors’ centre and stopped at a rather cool play area for Alexandra to burn off some energy. While there, we were treated with multiple visits from wandering emus. When we finally reached the visitors’ centre, I wandered off to find some kangaroos and was able to approach a grouping of three ‘roos grazing nearby. They were beautiful! We also stopped on our drive out to photograph more kangaroos who were grazing in the grasses by the road.
From the reserve, we drove up to the nearby NASA space observation station. We looked around at the displays, listened to the magnetic changes caused by traveling through Saturn’s rings (I got video!), and enjoyed a spirited debate with one of the guides there as to whether or not the moon landing was real or a hoax. My favorite part of that conversation was the vehemence with which the man spoke against the Smithsonian’s allowance of the general public to touch the moon rock. Actually, it’s apparently the third rock the museum has gone through since opening the display and according to this man, it was the last that NASA was going to allow them.
As we drove back to the house after our explorations of the Tidbinbilla area, I realized that all this bush we were driving through was part of the ACT – the Australia Capital Territory. In my head, I’ve always equated the ACT with WDC in that they’re both little areas that serve as the capital area for the country. I learned yesterday, though, that the majority of the ACT is actually bushland and sheep pastures.
Which brings us to today – Friday. The four of us, Alexandra, my dad, Uncle Lou, and myself, drove back into the Parliament area of Canberra to the National Australian Library – a beautiful building that seems to be much like the US’s Library of Congress and that has free wireless. Yes, we based our tourist activities on the availability of wireless internet.
After about two hours at the library catching up on the details of life that we’d missed, we had a quick lunch before going into Questacon, Canberra’s interactive museum of science and technology. I vaguely remember going there twenty years ago, but really only remember that I thought it was “cool.” I suppose that remark, coming from an overly angsty preteen, was high praise, but really it doesn’t begin to describe the experience. We enjoyed hands on demonstrations of lots of different scientific principles, plus took a ride on a simulated 4.5 earthquake (it was pretty accurate), a simulated shark observation cage to watch it feeding, and an amazingly realistic simulated rollercoaster ride.
Alex is curled up with her grandfather and Uncle Lou, watching “Enchanted” this evening before heading off to bed – the end of yet another long day.
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