Our Travels Across and Destinations in A.C.T.

Table of Contents – Places & Venues

Parliament Houses & the Portrait Gallery

Australian War Memorial & National Museum of Australia

National Gallery of Australia, High Court & Back to the N.S.W. for the Snowfields

Arriving in A.C.T. and Floriade (Flower Show).?

Based in Sutton some 4 km out of ACT we are lucky enough as to have arrived into Canberra whilst Floriade is on. Floriade purports to be the largest flower show in the southern hemisphere. It is very well put together and with free admission pulls a crowd of most Canberrans and a lot of foreign tourists fly in for it. The show includes flower arranging demonstrations so it was all I could do not to bring my extensive knowledge of this to bear on the organizers and demonstrators. We made “Floriade” our first full day outing and treated ourselves to a ride on “Jenny” whilst in the area. “Jenny costs $5.00 for a half hour cruise on “Lake Burley Griffen” and includes hot tea or coffee so is probably the best value we have experienced to date. The day is best described with a couple of photographs which are featured blow:-

Parliament Houses & Portrait Gallery

It is a unique experience to have such unprecedented access to our Houses of Parliament buildings. The new building at left which was opened in 1988 is impressive with its flag flying proudly and dominantly above it. Then when you turn around you can see the old Parliament house with the war memorial behind it in the distance. Both offer extensive access to tourists with the old parliament house also housing the “Portrait Gallery”. The parking was free with the only charge being $2.00 admission per adult for the old Parliament house. We spent most of a day just taking in all these two buildings had to offer.

Australian War Memorial & National Museum of Australia

Our day started by meeting Aunty Betty who was traveling with Cousin Dianne and had arrived in Canberra the previous day. After enjoying a coffee and conversation with them at their serviced apartment we took them to pick up their rental car. Next bidding them farewell we went to the Australian War Memorial. It is a full half day or even more with displays that will engross and enlighten everyone. Housing many aircraft including the German jet fighter and rocket fighter that could have changed the course of history if! There is a “Mosquito, Spitfire, Zero, Mustang, etc., etc. There is a Japanese midget submarine lots of artillery and small weapons. There are historical accounts of all of the wars that Australia was involved in with displays and models to help everyone get a feel for what went on – A MUST SEE. Again the National Museum of Australia took us several hours to take in with its main theme to be to tell stories about Australians and of being Australian.

National Gallery of Australia, High Court & back to N.S.W. for the Snowfields

This is our last day in the A.C.T. so we have decided to visit the National Gallery of Australia to see all of the wonderful art that they brag of having. Yes they do have some nice stuff that would go great in our home but mostly they have a lot of cr##p. How they let people go off with our taxpayer funds to buy the rubbish is beyond me. Still it must be special if you are one of those very special people that understand “true” art! With that out of the system we did enjoy around 3 hours looking through it all and most of that time was spent looking at the art we did like. After that we walked across to the high court but decided that we were all finished by now. It was decided to visit the Kamberra winery but on arrival we discovered that they wanted $5.00 per head to taste their wines (which did come off anything you purchased) but we have a pretty strong view that if a winery wants you to pay to taste their product it is usually because most people don’t buy their wines after tasting them.

Thursday we left Canberra and the “Capital Country Holliday Village” (which rates as one of the dirtiest parks when it came to their ablutions where even the taps were so dirty that you needed to use something to protect yourself from needing another wash if you turned them off by unprotected hand) for the N.S.W. snowfields.

Canberra is a fabulous place to visit with so much to see that a week would probably be better than the 5 days we had.

You will need to go back to N.S.W. to follow the trip from here.

Last revised: Date Sunday, September 30, 2007