Cold, warm, impressive and unpretentious
It was cold…really cold. I haven’t experienced a frost like the one I did in Canberra for quite some time and certainly never on the Gold Coast. The thing that made it tolerable, if not spectacular, was the brilliantly clear blue sky.
I left my hotel (the Rydges Lakeside, possibly the worst hotel I have had the misfortune to stay at) at 8.30 and headed out for my planned day in the nations capital.
The only redeeming feature my hotel had was it’s location. The night before I had pored over a map torn from a tourist brochure and, using my fingers as makeshift callipers, I had figured that I could easily walk to and between the 4 attractions I wanted to visit. All well and good on paper but I had not taken into account how old and unfit I was.
My first port of call was Parliament House. If you are going to come to Canberra then it really is a must see. Luckily all the politicians were out of town kissing hands and shaking babies in preparation for the upcoming election so I figure that I would have the place to myself. It turned out to be a little difficult to get to on foot, there was a few mad dashes across heavily trafficked roads and up a couple of embankments, but it also included an extremely pleasant walk along the banks of the lake. 
As you undoubtedly know the lake was named after Walter Burley Griffin, the American who designed the city and didn’t manage to live long enough to see the lake completed. He would have been proud to have had his name on it if he’d been walking with me. It looked stunning with a mist rising off the water but I fear I may have been one of few who were enjoying it as everyone else seemed to be in a hurry to move their heavily clad selves into warm buildings.
My first impression of the Parliament Building was one of neglect. As I was walking I made my way up the large open grassy space in front of the building and I couldn’t help thinking that I’d seen better lawns at a gophers convention. It certainly wasn’t the immaculately maintained frontage that you would expect of somewhere like the White House but I imagine that all the visiting world leaders don’t spend a great deal of time wandering around outside and probably use a completely different entry, if they come here at all.
Once inside it all struck me at first as being slightly underwhelming. Apart form an initial metal detector there certainly wasn’t the amount of security one would picture in a situation like this. In fact I found myself free to wander pretty much anywhere I pleased and after mailing a couple of post cards at the Post Office on the second floor I set out to do exactly that.
It lacked the splendour of a palace and the sense of self importance that the White House has and, as I walked around, I started to appreciate it more. There was a feeling of Australian unpretentiousness, and I liked it. There wasn’t even anyone waiting to take the free tour, unlike the hours long queue I saw in Washington. Even on my way out of the building I stopped for a casual chat with one of the security guards and we simply talked about the weather and what it was like to live in Canberra. He had a genuine pride and fondness in the place that was heart warming to see.
From Parliament House I walked across one of the bridges across the lake and then around the lakeshore until I could look directly up Anzac Parade to the War Memorial, my second destination. 
Anzac Parade is a work in progress. A wide avenue that sweeps down the hill from the War Memorial to end at the lake, it has smaller memorials lining it’s edge to the various conflicts Australia has fought in. Some, like the Vietnam memorial, are extremely well done and evocative while other open areas have signs telling of what is yet to come. At the lake end of the Parade is a monument from New Zealand, the other part of Anzac, that is meant to show Aus and NZ as two handles on the same basket.
I hiked up the Parade to the Memorial itself and was again struck by the relative lack of people. Any other capital city in the world would have had hordes of tourists visiting national monuments of this type but here it was very quiet. But somehow that quiet fits a place like a war memorial. It meant I could walk slowly along the walls inscribed with so many names in silence. The touching part about this display was the number of poppies that had been tucked into gaps between the slabs.
The museum portion of the Memorial is extremely well done. Even though the WW2 portion was closed for renovations there was more than enough still available to keep me occupied. It is a nice combination of static displays of artefacts, video and interactive displays and dioramas that are amazing in both detail and the way they manage to capture a a moment in time. It is another unpretentious building that seems fittingly sombre on approach but manages to hide a wealth of riches, revealed once you get inside.
From the Memorial I headed towards the National Film and Sound Archive. The brochure I had torn my map from had a full page advertisement for a display there that was devoted to the pioneers of Australian animation. Being more than a little interested in animation and having a few artefacts from early Australian animation myself I was keen to see it. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment with the display consisting of only a few pictures on a wall and a small set from the “Dot and the Kangaroo” films of Yoram Gross. 
From the Film and Sound Archives I headed to the National Museum. this is built on the previous site of a hospital and developed a tragic history when a young girl was killed by flying debris when the planned demolition went wrong. Families were watching the “implosion” from the other side of the lake when it exploded instead. The security guard I had been chatting to still remembered the event and the name of the 12 year old girl who died.
The Museum itself was okay. I probably expected more from something styling itself as the National Museum but in reality it is not as if they had managed to commandeer every artefact and display from every other museum in the country. In fairness it has only been open 9 years and is probably finding its feet but it really didn’t strike me as being any better (or worse) than any other museum you might find in any state capital. That being said, i did have an enjoyable time wandering around and what they have is done very well.
My day had started out very planned. Being a government town everything works to a 9 – 5 schedule and I had only 8 hours to try and fit my 4 destinations in. Thanks to my fleeting visit visit to the Film and Sound Archive i managed it without feeling like I had glossed over too much but I still feel like there is much more to be seen, both in the places I had already visited and in all those I hadn’t. I want to go back again soon.