Culture in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Tue 23 Mar 2010 23:49
35:17.958S  149:07.424E
 
On February 14, we left the high country and the state of Victoria behind and drove to Canberra, the capital of Australia.  It was a long drive, but we somehow still found time for a winery stop as well as gourmet cheese shop stop.  We've found it's important to maintain a good balance of  food/wine/scenery while traveling, so we are doing our best to achieve that perfect equilibrium.
 
Canberra, a city of only 324,000 people, is about as low key as a capital city can be - on the surface anyway.  The streets are set up in a circle and spoke pattern with about 30,000 roundabouts connecting them at various points.  It was good that traffic didn't appear to be a problem here because navigation through the curlicues was hard enough.  We didn't see any tall buildings.  Instead we saw large expanses of green lawn (there's been an inordinate amount of rain in this area this year), and a downtown that looked more like suburbia than a capital city.  We arrived on a Sunday, so we initially thought the sedate nature of the place was simply a weekend phenomenon.  During our drive around the city on Monday morning though, there didn't seem to be an increase in the number of circling cars.  There must be an undercurrent of frenzied activity bubbling just under the surface though because we see TV and newspaper reports about the vast amounts of mudslinging that goes on between the ruling party and the opposition on a daily basis in Parliament House.  It seems the mudslinging literally does take place under the surface since the new Parliament House (constructed in 1988) was built into a hillside and is covered by grass.
 
We stayed one night in Canberra at the luxurious Hyatt hotel.  This time it was a handicapped room with floor to ceiling marble in the bathroom - including the shower stall with the all-important bench seat.  The next morning we went to the National Gallery of Australia to see the "Masterpieces from Paris" exhibition.  Six rooms full of impressionism and post-impressionism masterpieces by Monet, Degas, van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and others on loan from a museum in Paris.  It was very cool to see in person what we had only ever seen in prints or photos.  Even better was touring the jam-packed exhibition with someone in a wheelchair.  It was like traveling behind Moses - the crowds parted with no complaint while Don wheeled through them to all the best viewing positions with me in tow.  This wheelchair thing is highly recommended as a mode of travel in crowds.
 
Sorry, no pictures.  The exhibition didn't allow photos for obvious reasons and Parliament House is underground, so what's to see?  (Ok, that's a bit unfair....the Parliament house interior is said to be something to see, but we had places to go and people to see, so we circled out of Canberra as directly as possible from the National Gallery.)
 
Anne