The caravan rally folk were still about yesterday morning and showed no sign of moving on. They are a quiet lot and no bell ringing has been heard from this end of the camp. They learned early in their stay that one cannot turn the kettle or the microwave on at the same time as the electric heater; we have suffered a couple of power blackouts during our stay so far, however Chris now has instructions how to correct the situation if it happens again.
The day dawned bleaker than those over the weekend and we were glad that our morning plans were for inside activities; back to the War Memorial. We were there soon after opening and decided as we had on our previous visit, to go off on our own until 11 am when we met up in ANZAC Hall for the film and light shows on offer.
The first was a flight from England to drop bombs over German cities, while also spending time with the German families seeking shelter under the rain of terror. It was very well done. The next was a film experience made by Peter Jackson, portraying World War I planes in a dog fight. It showed the boyish excitement at the outset of the hunt and chase, and then the horror of death turning the game to reality. We sat amidst a contingent of Air Force trainees; I am not quite sure what they gained from the experience. The last was a film portraying the World War II troop carrier, HMS Sydney destroying the German raider Emden.
We left the Memorial to have our lunch, intending earlier to spend time after dining, walking up and down ANZAC Parade to visit all the memorials that flank this grand boulevard. But the weather had not improved, the cold continued to crawl in through our collars and up our sleeves, so we retreated once more to the museum to spend another couple of hours trying to absorb the mass of information.
On our way home we popped into a travel agency to suss out options for returning to New Zealand for a brief reunion with our family. We came away with a few options, discussed them during the evening and decided that we were not much further on with our planning than we had been in the morning.
This morning, after hanging a load of washing with frozen hands, we headed off toward Dickson, returning to the Flight Centre and booked and paid for air flight tickets. Matters are now set in concrete; we are flying out of Sydney on 26th of May, returning to resume our travels one month later. Now with a date, we will have to be more organised fitting the yet-to-be-visited attractions in to a more limited time frame, and of course sort out all the irritating practical requirements such as where to store the rig for the duration.
In the meantime it was back to current Canberra explorations, this time to the National Library. After securing a car park, we made our way through to the entrance and found ourselves just in time to join a tour party of one around the Treasures of the Library Gallery. We were shown the oldest surviving document printed in Australia, a playbill dated 1796 and a small exhibition about Eddie Mabo, the aboriginal activist who lobbied for recognition of native land title specifically for and in the Torres Strait on Murray Island, which had massive implications regarding land rights Australia wide. It put an end to the “terra nullus” or land belonging to nobody, the basis on which Captain Cook planted his flag on Resolution Island claiming Australia as British territory. Obviously this was a huge landmark decision in Australia’s history, the culmination of Mabo’s struggle from 1982, finally succeeding in 1992, very soon after Eddie Mabo lost his battle with cancer.
Captain Cook’s original journal is also on display here along with a large collection of memorabilia. Keeping with the navigational theme, there is also a collection of old maps from the time of the Dutch East India Company days in the islands now known as Indonesia, during the busy sea trading years from 1603 through to 1799.
I do love medieval illuminated scripts; I always think of the movie “The Name of the Rose” when I think about the monks tucked away in European monasteries specialising in that very activity. There are several manuscripts here in the library gallery, carefully preserved under heavy glass cabinets and they are just so beautiful.
There are many thousands of “treasures” kept at the library, and those on display are just a random collection dragged up from the basement storage at the whim of the curator. We only had an hour and a half to spend here, and so resolving to return another day, we returned to the cruiser, lunched then made our way to the parliament to collect our tickets for Question Time.
Not only did we have to subject ourselves to the security checks endured when we called the other week, but this time there was a double whammy at the entrance and then a second procedure before we were able to enter the chamber.
Today I was taken aside and my ever heavy handbag was put through an extra machine and I had some wand attached to a computer passed over me. The dour security guard was unresponsive when I asked why the special treatment. I was apparently randomly selected for this special treatment. Drugs? Explosives? All of those and anything else apparently, but I was disappointingly free of all these residues, so was allowed to pass on through.
Before entering the parliamentary chamber, we and the many others waiting to do the same, had to take our shoes and belts off and wait even longer, feeling most inelegant in our stockinged feet and hoping our pants would not fall. Eventually we were through and then the fun began.
Parliament has been in recess for a while and today was the first day back in business. Scandals have been brewing over the intervening weeks. Today is also Budget Day, and the government was hoping that the opposition would spend the hour and a quarter asking about that, opening opportunities to expound their wonderful policies. Instead the opposition dragged up the alleged crimes of the Speaker (who did open the session but retired immediately, handing over his office to the Deputy) and a Labour member who is alleged to have spent hundreds of thousands of union members’ hard earned subscriptions on fine wine, prostitutes and his personal election campaign. The expulsion of each was moved by the opposition and the parliament went into division; an interesting activity viewed from up in the balconies as the members moved from one side of the house to the other. Both motions failed but the surrounding debate and farce made for excellent entertainment. We did not leave the House until nearly 4 pm; the dew was starting to come down over the washing. Over dinner we decided that we would remain in Canberra for at least another week before moving on.
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