Friday 31st Oct
No wonder we are all sneezing it went from 30+ degrees to 5C
overnight and back up to around 30C again today.
Armed with a couple of trees worth of pamphlets from a very
well organised information centre in the city, we headed to the ‘Old Parliament
House’ where we had a light lunch (yes it was that time we had a late start, at
5C you have no show of getting Nancy out of bed until the place heats up). Then
we joined a guided tour that turned out was just us three and a very nice and
knowledgeable lady guide.
From here we went to the Australian War Memorial and were
just in time to join the last tour of the day. World War 1 main display is
being re-vamped and overhauled for the want of a better term and unfortunately
won’t be re-opened until December however there is a temporary section that is
very interesting and although I feel fairly well informed regarding ‘The war to
end all wars’. I still get astounded when reading the statistics of every
nation involved at the total waste of young lives and the futility of it all
and countries continue to do it somewhere in the world for one supposedly
honourable and just reason or other.
Are wars and epidemics such as Ebola just another form of
attrition in the scheme of things.
We stayed for the closing ceremony and Last Post
that the Hon Dr.Brendan Nelson introduced as a daily commitment to the memory of our
fallen in all wars and although it is a short ceremony it is symbolic and no
less meaningful than a full blown ANZAC service and the large crowd that
gathered for it was testament to that. We plan on making several visits to the
War Memorial but will keep them short so we don’t become museum-ed out. I have found a strong WiFi in the Canberra Visitors Centre across town so will be able to up-date periodically. I'll try photos next.
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