Cooma to Canberra: Sunday 29 April 2012

After a cosy night in our "shearers hut" baa baa! Dave and I pulled the bike trailer up a rocky slope to hitch onto the big grey Honda…and Dave then tried to ride off with the trailer stand still down….grrate! oops…a good start to a Sunday, and we were on our way. First just out of Cooma town we spent some time at the Snowy Mountain Hydroelectricity Scheme Discovery Centre….a very interesting place, free entry and kept us engrossed for a couple of hours. We learned about massive engineering plans and the big range of migrant workers from post WW2 Europe involved, and how sadly 121 lives were lost in the construction of this huge project. It also explained the various dams and towns we had passed the day before.

We found the Monaro Highway to Canberra to be a rather boring highlands road (Monaro means treeless plains) …no twisties. Cold foggy parts, glad we were in warm motorbike gear. We paid for 5 nights tent site at the Canberra South Caravan Park, which is the one closest to Canberra city. A bit basic with amenities but clean. This place has mostly permanent people staying, as rental accommodation in Canberra is so hard to get. We have met some poor people here, unemployed but looking for work, and others doing manual labour and hoping to get better work. There are also some very basic structures with families living in them, right alongside the noisy highway. But the people are friendly and doing their best…and we are not rubbing it in about us having a great holiday. Some are feeling sorry for us because we are the only tenters…and it has been 0 degrees at night, with ice on our trailer in the morning. But we don't spoil their pity for us by telling them we have a little fan heater on our powered site...let them think we truly are "The Intrepids"!

Dave even tried his first morning in Canberra going to the showers without his towel….only he hadn't planned to leave it behind in our tent…he got back grizzly and bristly and unshaven, having dried his shivering body with his undies ha ha! I couldn't help but fall over laughing at the sad sight looming up in the morning mist.

Canberra site seeing: Monday 30 April 2012: Old Parliament House, the High Court, and National Portrait Gallery.

As we always do on arrival in a new area, we went to the Information Centre to plan our site seeing. Then, armed with various maps and brochures, we went on to explore Old Parliament House, which today is called "the Museum of Australian Democracy." What a fascinating place, where since 1927 our Prime Ministers and various party politics have held court. This huge and simple classical building complex looks like a giant white wedding cake. We went on a free guided tour (it only cost us $1 each to get into the building) and we stayed nearly all day, exploring the corridors of power, the upper and lower houses of parliament, the crowded press gallery area etc etc. You could almost feel as if the politicians from the past were still running around, lobbying and wheeling and dealing. Some of the rooms still had an aroma of cigars and tobacco and it was a man's club in the Senate area in particular till finally women got to have a go at being politicians. They had to paint out the "Male" on the toilets and make them "Unisex" to let the girls share the corridors of power!

We had fun dressing up in Speaker of the House costume and wig and sitting in a lookalike fancy big throne chair. Move over Peter Slipper! A couple of wise goons are planning a takeover! (see photos)

Old Parliament House closed down in 1988 and Bob Hawke as Prime Minister and others moved over to the New Parliament House nearby.

Later in the day we walked over to have a gander at the High Court of Australia. Another magnificent building and it takes your breath away when you go inside this massive building, though it looks rather minimalist on the outside. Dave took photos of the water cascading gently down from the grand entrance, and other photos inside. Again, free entry and tour guides at various places to tell us about what happens here. It is very good to see the Court where anybody can appeal if a case is serious enough. This is where Lindy Chamberlain won her appeal against the stupid and cruel murder conviction against her and her husband, as did Andrew Mallard. Also the Mabo Land rights judgement, among lots of others. The tobacco companies are currently trying to appeal against the plain packaging of cigarettes….why don't they advertise the suffering of smoking cancer patients instead, the greedy hypocrites?! We missed out on being in the public gallery to hear the court proceedings today. It was an impressive important feeling being inside 2 of the Courts that were open to the public.

On our walking between the Old and New Parliament House we saw the remnants of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, with a couple of small tents and a small fire burning in a circle near a "Sovereignty" structure in black, red and gold.

We still had an hour to spare, so we popped into the National Portraits Gallery, which was also fascinating. Too much to see in a hurry really, though we tried! I was intrigued by a large sketch of Ned and Dan Kelly and the 3 Victorian policemen Ned shot dead…one of these poor fellows, mounted trooper Constable Michael Scanlan looks very much like my eldest son Joe. See photo Dave took! How Ned Kelly is described by some as a folk "hero" escapes me. When we were in Glenrowan last week Dave heard a mother telling her 2 children that "Ned Kelly robbed the rich and gave to the poor" so Dave promptly interrupted her and said to the kids "No he didn't, he was a murderer who killed 3 policemen." I saw the woman look alarmed and she grabbed her kids and took off, bubble burst ha ha! Anyway, he didn't rob the poor because they had nothing he could steal from them!