Canberra

We didn’t think we would have so much fun in Canberra but we did. Australians seem to view their capital as somewhat dull, artificial and not a desirable place to spend any time due to inclement weather and it’s somewhat inorganic development. Canberra is the capital of Australia, where the government sits, but it should be called the museum capital as there are SO many museums here.

Canberra was perfect, enjoyed by the four of us – and there was still more that we all wanted to see by the time we left. We extended our 3 day stay to 5.

The kid’s favourite place was a science learning centre, called Questacon. From Tadhg’s blog: “Questacon is a science place that you can play, watch and do on the first floor, and explore. There was a robot that you could direct to do exercises, make him speak lines from films, do sound affects and also answer questions. I had a go and thought he was awesome. In a room called EXCITE there was fun stuff like playing against a robot in air hockey (the robot nearly always won), you could play another table hockey with 4 people (shaped like a cross) with a spinning wheel thing in the middle which made the puck go randomly. I loved the room with all the logic and maths puzzles. We stayed there a long time, and I also loved the connect sand in that room. “Perception Deception” was the first room. One was four wires with spaces I between the wires, that if you close your hands around them and make circles with your joined hands over the wires, it felt like you were touching glass, although there was nothing I between your hands. That room showed me that my mind can do tricks, as sometimes your brain thinks it sees or feels something.”

We also went to:
1. Australian War memorial, which was the first museum Ilona, Tadhg and Daniel visited on the first day. The first part is about ANZAC and there was WWII.
2. Australian Parliament (not a museum but where the politicians sit).
3. Royal Australian Mint which is a factory where they make Australian coins/money. There was a computer game where you had to put the old money over to pretend to buy things in the 1960s, which kept Ilona and Tadhg busy (their maths lesson for the day!). They had pounds, shillings and pence then, not the Australian Dollar and Cents. The Australian two dollar coin is smaller than the one dollar coin, and nobody could tell us why. Even though the mint is a factory, there was no free sample of what they produce on the way out!
4. National Museum of Australia which was great to look at all the aboriginal stuff and all the inventions. Tadhg’s take on the museum : “They gave me a booklet to find things in each room. The aboriginals do a dance to welcome visitors. The white people were allowed to just shoot the aboriginals, just go over and go bang. I don’t think that was fair. They had a Wiggles exhibition as they came from Australia. They showed how the opera house was built in Sydney. There was a cool room called “K Space” where we made a robot on screen then my sister and I had to work together to try to move it. I was controlling the feet and right hand, Ilona was controlling the head and left arm. We had to work together.
There was a pig with one head and two bodies which had been born but they kept in a jar. They also had snakes preserved”.
5. National Capital Exhibition, which is a museum showing how and why Canberra City was planned and built to be the capital. American husband and wife architect team who had never visited the location won the competition. The kids spent their time playing with the great supply of Lego they had there. For my contribution, I made an aboriginal flag from Lego (red black and gold), alongside a brown and white chessboard…….well we were in the political capital.
6. Contemporary art gallery (rather small – just two rooms, but still interesting: they had copies of Beckett’s Endgame, Waiting for Goddot and Krapp’s last tape as an installation, all of which had shapes perfectly cut out of them, like someone used a large paper puncher).
7. National Art Gallery, which I had the luxury of exploring on my own, while the others were viewing one of the four copies of the Magna Carter in the Parliament.