Open Writing

For a long time, one of my husband's ambitions has been to see the War Memorial Museum in Canberra. Finally, we are here, having flown from New Zealand, then driven to Canberra by my cousin, Beverley, from Bairnsdale, near Lakes Entrance. Our plan is to stay four nights, and have a leisurely look around. We have been advised to stay in a motel in Queanbeyan, just out of Canberra, which will be cheaper, although further away.

The layout of Canberra is a mystery to Tom. I don't even pretend, I am hopeless at finding my way anywhere. He is usually good at navigation, but the circular streets have him beaten, and after telling Beverley to turn right, when she thought it was left, or visa versa—and she usually turned out to be correct—he left it to her.

The War Memorial Museum was amazing, far surpassing anything we had expected. We walked around for six hours, examining everything, our feet protesting at the end of the day. The dioramas of the battle scenes were the highlight of the museum tour. If you haven't been there, I would recommend that you go, just for the artistry displayed in these magnificent displays.

Tom took numerous photographs with the digital camera given to us by one of our sons-in-law. He had also given us a memory stick, which would hold more photos than we would need to take. Tom took photos all over the museum, inside and outside. We paid our respects to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and sat and admired the stained glass windows, the beautiful ceilings, and the marble of the walls and the floor. The walls with the names of the fallen, with the red poppies stuck in the grooves, were impressive in the dying sunlight. Tom had re-discovered his interest in photography from his youth. We left him to walk along Anzac Parade, where he snapped photos of all the memorials.

The next day we visited Parliament House. This seemed to us one of the most modern buildings we had been privileged to see. Although opened in 1988, it has all the futuristic planes, angles and glass walls that one could imagine might have been designed for the space age or the 22nd century. Outside, was a pyramid, not unlike the one outside the Louvre in Paris. We were amazed and envious. What a wonderful place for the Australian Government to work in. One could imagine that only good decisions could come from a government working in such beautiful surroundings.

We were taken on a tour. We stared at the Great Hall, which seemed so big it was hard to imagine what kind of event would fill such a huge room. A magnificent tapestry, 20 by 9 metres, one of the largest tapestries in the world overlooks the room, with its highly polished wooden floor of different Australian timbers. This tapestry was based on a painting by famous Australian painter, Arthur Boyd, AC, OBE, and took a team of 13 weavers just under two and a half years to complete, depicting the beauty of the Australian bush, with trunks of eucalyptus trees. A cockatoo is visible at the top, and with special permission of the artist, Haley's Comet was inserted to commemorate the year that the new Parliament House was opened.

The Senate and the House of Representatives were decorated in pinks and pale greens, not the old fashioned deep colours of the past, which you can see in the old Parliament House, but everything has some resemblance to the colours of the Australian natural world. In the entry Foyer 48 huge marble clad columns represent a eucalyptus forest. Various patchwork quilts on the walls impressed us, and again the camera was getting good use. We were quite surprised that cameras were allowed, as in most well known buildings we had been in overseas, the taking of photographs had not been permitted.

Tom became concerned about the camera, and finally took it into a camera shop, where a kindly older man explained that although he had the card in the camera, because he had it set incorrectly, he had only the last 20 photos he had taken on the internal memory of the camera. The memory card was empty. Imagine his disappointment. At least we had bought a few postcards.

Now we are tempted to pay a return visit to Canberra, not just to retake the photos, but to see everything again, and especially the places we didn't have time to see.

© Shirley Henwood