Saturday, November 10

After our McD fix in the morning, we headed off to Anzac Parade, the very large road that leads from the War Memorial to Lake Burley Griffin.  The Parade is lined with 12 memorials to various branches of the military, or to specific campaigns.  There was a multi-Geocache with required you to visit and get clues from each one.  Since we were early for the museum, we spent some time doing the cache.  We saw about 4 tour buses full of Turkish people at the Australian-Turkey memorial, so had to skip that one.  I would say that these rival, or even exceed, the ones in Washington, DC... they are on that same scale. 

This is the Australian Navy memorial.  It's a stylized ship, with the figures depicting typical shipboard jobs.  And for those of you doing the geocache, it has 13 lines radiating from it!

 

Off to the war memorial again.  Drew headed into the aircraft hall (duh), then to the ANZAC hall.  I wandered around kind of everywhere.  Again, it's a spectacular museum/memorial.  In the Hall of Valour, there were probably close to 100 VC recipients commemorated, with their citation and in most cases their medals.  Reading their stories... it is just incomprehensible what they did.  We ask so much of those who defend us, and can never repay their sacrifices. 

 

This is one half of the roll of honour, where over 102,000 names of those who gave their lives in conflict are recorded.

 

Drew will have to add his aeroplane stuff here!

 <Drew here>

The aircraft displays were excellent.  Lots of aircraft, all presented in excellent condition, and with the histories of the particular machines and artifacts outlined whenever possible.  There were two multimedia displays, one outlining WWII RAAF bomber command, and the other WWI Aussie Royal Flying Corps, both which used the displayed aircraft as a part of the show.  Both were well done and appeared to be well received by all of the visitors.  I especially appreciated some of the Luftwaffe aeoplanes displayed in their original paint... and would have loved to take one or two of the WW1 planes up for a few circuits around the patch!

 

Curtiss P40 Kittyhawk

Mitsubishi "Zero"

P-51 Mk. IV Mustang

 

Avro Lancaster

 

Messerschmitt BF-109

 

SE5a

 

Pfalz D.XII

a very tidy AVRO 504

 

Souvenir's from Richthofen's shoot-down,

including his Fokker's compass and one of his flying boots

 

Albatros D.Va

 

 

<back to Marie!>

 

Overnight, a clutch of ducks were hatched.  Museum staff said the duck has been coming for a couple of years to hatch her ducklings in the shrubs along the reflecting pool.  They usually relocate them to the lake, but they thought the would let them be for the day, as Prince Charles and Camilla were coming to the memorial later this afternoon.  Staff put up a ramp (upper right side of the pool) so the ducklings could get in and out of the pool, and put up barricades along the right side of the pool so that no one could disturb the ducklings.

 

 

 

Inside the Hall of Memory rests the tomb of the unknown soldier, and also four huge mosaics depicting the three branches of the service, along with Nurses, I believe.  Here is a big giant sailor.  For scale, I would come to just above his boot.

 

 

 

We met Geoff and Angela and the whole Skellam clan at noonish, and headed off to pick up some lunch supplies.  We drove what seemed like forever (but was only about 40 km) through some beatiful landscapes to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.  This is the complex that first received and relayed the images of man on the moon to earth.  They did the same for the recent Curiosity landing on Mars.  There is a small but very interesting visitor centre, with some good overall info on man's space effots.  There was even a display on how the astronauts poop in space.  Highly intesting, and not what you would think at all!

 

A modern aboriginal painting in the deep space visitor centre.

 

After driving for quite awhile through a landscape of rolling hills, you turn a corner and see this!  It reminded me very much of the NRC radio telescope complex outside of Kelowna.

We crested a hill and came upon this wire with about 30 gallah's perching on it.  Lucky for us, there were still a few left by the time we got the picture!

 

Next on the agenda was a late afternoon bushwalk in the Tidbinbilla Reserve.  We saw our first large groups of kangaroos, along with an emu that was getting a little too close for our comfort.  The ranger at the visitor centre told us they had daily sightings of platypus in the 'Sanctuary', so that's where we headed.  Sure enough, Stewart with the sharp eyes pointed one out to us, as we were all looking in the other direction.  I'll have to believe everyone that it was a platypus, because really... it could have been a seal, or an otter, or a diving bird.  We just saw a small little creature breaking the surface of the water.  But it was fun! 

 

Interesting rocks in the Tidbinbilla Reserve.

 

Platypus.  Honest.  The big ring on the right.

 

I think this is when Drew said 'uh oh', and all of us started backing away.

 

 

We were so lucky to have all the Skellamses guide us for two of our Canberra days.  Geoff, Angela, Stewart (sorry, I don't know which spelling you use), Gabby and Rhiann... thank you, thank you, thank you!  As we were heading back to the city, we pulled off the road to say our good byes.  I hope we will get the opportunity to host you in Victoria some day!

 

Drew and I got back to the hostel, had a quick bite around the corner, and collapsed into bed again!