Canberra 1
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Thu 18 Dec 2014 05:19
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No
year-long trip to Australia could miss out the nation’s capital, Canberra, so
the crew of the VS felt obliged to go. Canberra was purpose built as the capital
following Federation in 1901. An international competition held to design the
city was won by an American, Walter Burley Griffin. It was to be a garden city
on a monumental scale. Griffin was appointed Director of Design and Construction
in 1913. By 1920 he had been sacked and until the mid-1950s development was
frustrated by bureaucratic bickering, political indifference and the effects of
the Great Depression and WWII. Here is the city centrepiece, actually much as
Griffin envisaged, looking across Lake Burley Griffin towards parliament hill in
the middle distance and the national war memorial in the centre
foreground:
 By coincidence our visit coincided with the 100th anniversary Remembrance
Day, so we went to the service:
  To my absolute astonishment the Prime Minister did not turn up in person,
despite Australia having lost proportionately more of its population in WWI than
did the UK. I don’t think any British PM could have survived this absence but
strangely here it occasioned no comment at all (and the PM is deservedly in deep
trouble – the UK press would have siezed the opportunity to hound him for
dishonouring the dead, but not here).
A very poignant occasion, and of course very professionally carried off
despite two of the Navy guard of honour collapsing on the parade ground from the
heat (I doubt if their colleagues in the Army and Air Force will ever let them
live it down).
Here is the massive 1930s National War Memorial which despite looking at
first glance like a Soviet Union mausoleum actually achieves its objective – a
place of deep peace and reflection, with the names of all 102 000 Australians
killed on active service duty since the Boer War in 1899 (one was added this
year, his name being formally read out during the service):
 Here is the Captain Cook fountain, looking across the lake to the museums
and art galleries (the large pillared building is the National Library), a main
objective of our visit:
 Below, the library up close. We went there specifically to see Capt (then
Lieutenant) Cook’s Journal from his first expedition during which he
“discovered” Australia’s east coast. It was quite eerie reading his own
handwriting describing his time at Botany Bay. The Journal was very wisely
bought for the nation by the Library as acquisition No.1 in the 1920s when the
Library was created. It is one of the ‘National Treasures’ (a really good idea I
thought) in a fascinating gallery.
 But overall we did not like Canberra at all. It is cold and impersonal,
many of the national buildings are truly ugly (as is the whole CBD), it is just
far too big for pedestrians (designed by an American for travel by car) leading
to long hot footslogs between sites, and the museums are second rate. A big
disappointment, and sadly one shared by most tourists we have met.
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