This past weekend (a very reluctant) Liz and I headed down to Australia’s capital city of Canberra. Canberra is known for being a pretty boring town and while it wasn’t riveting in any sense of the word, I wouldn’t call it boring. Our day started out stopping for some tea at a little town called Goulburn. Goulburn is a tiny, quaint town that reminded me of the retirement community in Manchester, Indiana. Aside from an adorable main street and a pretty central park, it is home to “The Big Marino”. For those of you that aren’t aware, Australia is full of random “big things”. They have huge statues of strawberries, trout, worms, and bulls just to name a few. This town was home to the Marino, or a kind of sheep. The thing was HUGE! I was freaking out with excitement. All sarcasm aside, I was thrilled to be seeing this thing and sweet talked the bus driver into stopping so I could take some pictures. It was at least three stories tall and we found out that townspeople didn’t like it’s original location so after two days of moving it, they finally found a place that suited them for their big tourist attraction. After calming down from the adrenaline rush of seeing a three story tall giant sheep we continued on our journey to Canberra. Along the way we passed by Lake George which is a natural phenomenon. The Lake is 10 kilometers wide and 25 kilometers long, making it one of Australia’s largest freshwater lakes. While most lakes are almost always filled with water, Lake George is known for disappearing virtually overnight. The lake has been totally dry in 1827, 1890, 1902, most of the 1930s and the 1980s. It has been full in 1852, 1897, 1925, the 1950s and the 1980s. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we caught it on a dry year. I feel like the lake is another thing Australians lie to Americans about to make us look dumb. “Look at the grass! It’s called Lake George!” True or not, I believed it and was in awe watching sheep grazing in a “lake”.
The first stop in the city was Canberra’s Floriade festival. It is the biggest flower festival in Australia, although I felt as though it could have been just a regular size city’s festival. The flowers were all arranged into different patterns to resemble things like a block of cheese, wine pouring out of the bottle and a chocolate box. From ground level you couldn’t tell what they were supposed to be, but I’m sure they looked cool from up above. The festival also had booths with a lot of souvenirs and free samples-score! Liz and I saw all of the main attractions, including a gnome garden and a reptile show, and then we snuck off into the National Capital Museum right near the festival. The museum was nicely done and I could tell a lot of money had been put into it, however, it didn’t offer much. Australia’s history is just so short and boring that museums are pretty short and boring. It’s almost as if they just throw artifacts in the museums to fill them. We also found this true later in the day when we saw the National Museum of Australia. The quality of the exhibits was fantastic, but the information and artifacts were lacking.
The last stop on our day tour of Canberra was to Mount Ainslee Lookout. As you probably guessed, the lookout is on top of Mount Ainslee and overlooks the city of Canberra. The view was beautiful, as Canberra prides itself in being a park-like city. From the lookout we saw parliament house, the national museum, captain cook’s fountain as well as other random buildings we couldn’t identify. Our tour guides weren’t much help either. We were fortunate to be able to drive past a variety of memorials all spread nicely along one of the main streets in Canberra, however we weren’t able to get off of the bus to look at them more closely…maybe next time!
Canberra was a quick trip, but I am not able to check it off of my list of things to do over here. I’m having a blast seeing all of these new places and am having an even tougher time convincing myself it’s okay that I’m not seeing EVERYTHING. As school is winding down, I’m busy with assignments but still trying to enjoy being “Down Under”. The weather is getting nicer and I spent about three hours today just hanging out outside. It’s finally turning into the Australian weather I pictured! I have a lot of fun places planned in my last few weeks and can’t wait to share details. Until next time-G’day mate!
