Kapital tour day 4. The feeling you are being watched and War Memorial

Kapital tour day 4. The feeling you are being watched and War Memorial

Today I wanted to visit the War memorial and also to get away from a winging American from the night before who didn’t seem impressed with Canberra and my answer when he asked what there is to do. I said museums and he did say that he never heard much about the city before.  I wanted to be on the move and I would not be using a bike as I did not know the area and if it was safe for riding around.

I got a bacon and egg burger with coffee at the hostel and it was better than going to maccas and eating there. I polished that off and walked out for the day. It was actually chilly and I was wanting to check some things out along the lake front including a huge spire that I had seen the day before.  There was frost on the grass as it was white, but I checked to make sure I was not seeing things or that the grass was naturally this colour. I walked along the water front watching people ride past and laughing when a well packed bike over took a lycra clad rider. Think the other guy was in a hurry. On the way was a monument about citizens of Australia and I stopped at an old historic cottage by the name of Blundell’s Cottage. I never knew there were different tracks through the city and the one that the cottage was part of was on one that included cemeteries. That will have to be another time as I really do need a bike or car for this type of trek.  The Cottage is historic for the area and I cant remember why other than I took pics of the info. The spire thing was getting my interest still and I wandered over that way trying to remember what it was called.

The map on the park grounds gave me an answer and it was the American Australian memorial and I didn’t now anything else. I found it was lucky that I did not ride the bike there the day before as I had to cross several traffic lights. When I came close to it I found was not what I expected. The monument was in the area of the Department of Defence that was located on the Thomas Blamey Square who was a field marshal during WWII for Australia. I did see many military people floating around and thought I better walk on as it was getting close to the time the war memorial opened. I followed a street that took me to the HQ of the RSL though I did find a building I hadn’t really been looking for and as a joke I tried to check myself into the ASIO building other wise known as the Ben Chifley building. I went wandering to the front door and took a picture of the ASIO sign inside the window. I thought it was funny as there were cameras everywhere. I was talking to myself so they would know what I intended especially when I thought it was cool what I had found.  I knew I was close to the street where I could have a great view of Parliament and the War Memorial. There were kids floating around with the schools. One of the monuments that I had read about I came across from a book I read in Sacred Places. The Vietnam war memorial looked really good though there were many memorials along that street.

Once I was able to enter the museum I had missed one of the tours I wanted to go on, but I was able to go on another one that would take around 90 mins taking us through the two main war displays.  The guide took a group of us through the museum showing us the highlights. They had recently upgraded the World War 1 displays and they did look really nice and roomy. I think they had done the same to many displays to include digital slides. I thought these were really good as you could select an image from a diorama and you could get more information about the features. The tour was interesting and included the unknown soldier and several people pointed out from the roll on the wall. The oldest person and the youngest person to serve in WW1 with the people from HMAS Sydney that sunk with all on board lost. I did recognise another person who was on a tour and he was Brandon Nelson who was really passionate about recording names from the Vietnam War. We ended up going all the way through to the planes and G for George display, which is a Lancaster bomber that had done 80 missions. I was told that the memorial had the boots from the Red Baron. I also never knew how involved as an air force there was in WW1. Once I had lunch I went back to going through the displays working my way to the front of the building and watching some of the displays. I think towards the end I was getting museum fatigue as I had to go eventually since the day ended and I could see that it was going dark. I didn’t look at everything in the WW1 and WWII though I did get stuck with kids in the Vietnam War display and it was weird as there were crowds of people there, but very few looking at the Boar War or before federation soldiers who went to the Boxer rebellion or the Sudan. I did buy a book about defending Australia as I had found information that there was conflicting reports from the Japanese as some wanted to invade Australia, but knew they did not have the resources.

I do want to visit the war memorial again, but I don’t think it will be on this trip as I wouldn’t have the time to do it. Now I know what people say as it takes more than one day to go through the museum and the information overload. I walked down past the Turkish war memorial to see what the rest were and getting worried about the sun going down. I did not really know where I was going since I had only been on the lake front.  The other memorials I had stopped at were the Nurses memorial and the Trubruk one too. I took a street that would take me towards the tall buildings that I knew could take me close to where I wanted to go. I didn’t know if I was lost or not especially as I was going against the traffic. I seen a church that made a spark of interest go off in my head as I thought it could be something part of the tracks thing that I was looking for. I found the church and the cemetery was part of the tracks thing I was looking at though I couldn’t look through the cemetery as it was dark and I didn’t want to be where I was for too long. It didn’t take me long to find I was not far from the hostel and I popped out exactly where I should have been. I knew I also needed to do the washing as I had ran out of clothes though my feet were not that sore from the walking. I will have one more full day in the city of Canberra and that is another National type museum that I am visiting with a lecture about a movie from a book.