The Nations Capital - Architectural masterclass
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2006
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11
49
Trip End
May 23, 2007
Canberra, Australia
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Canberra or Kamberra to give its aboriginal name is the capital of Australia (Some people still think Sydney is) and its literal meaning is "Meeting place".
Canberra was created as such, due to the newly federated Australia needing a capital city in 1911. On the 8th October, after a competition to decide the design for it, Walter Burley Griffen and his wife's futuristic design was chosen to shape the city.
Anyway, thats enough of the history lesson. What they designed was in my opinion a beautiful city and like all Australian cities it is built on Water. This place is not like Sydney or Melbourne in their highly commercial, densely populated way, but a very picturesque, scenic city. A city of the future is how it has been shaped and after spending 3 days in it, we really loved it.
The city is built in shapes... Circles, parallel lines, triangles etc. It has been designed so perfectly. (When we show some photo's of it you will see what we mean - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra)
We found a rest stop just 8km north of it to sleep, and then we went and explored.There are so much National attractions to see.... National Museum, National Art Gallery (With a few Monet and Picasso pieces) National War Museum, National portrait gallery etc. All these building were all architectually beautiful and stand out across the landscape as you travel through the city.
In the tourist office, Ciara had picked up a "Canberra Passport", which gave a list of all the attractions and when you went to each one she got a stamp for the respective page. You can imagine, Ciara was in her element.Plus it meant that us two and Homer had a busy few days racing about viewing everything... We even ended up in the Indonesian Embassy.
Again i will say, it is a beautiful city and one we really enjoyed spending time in.
But again it was time to move on.
