Parliament House and National Art Gallery

Happy New Year, everybody! I think it's funny that, as I write this, it is 2008 here in OZ but it is still 2007 in Canada, and will be for another 8 hours. Time travel is a funny thing!

Jen and I had a very quiet New Year's Eve. We had originally been thinking about going downtown to watch the fireworks here in Canberra (Canadians, take note! Australia's capital city puts on a great fireworks show on New Year's... why can't we?). The fireworks here are supposed to be pretty good, although the really famous Australian display is of course in Sydney, where they were expecting a crowd of over 1 million people to ring the harbour and bring in the new year. Apparently more people come to watch Sydney's fireworks than they do New York's! At any rate, we're not in Sydney, and likely wouldn't have gone to be part of that size of a crowd even if we were there. Too many people! In the end, we were so tired after all our walking around today that we just staggered home, made dinner, watched a bit of TV and went to bed! Embarrassingly I didn't even make it to midnight so I could text you folks back home at the appropriate time. So for those of you who got Happy New Year text messages from me at 6am your time, that's why. :-)

So! Let me tell you what we did yesterday that got us so tired! There were two places on our touring list yesterday - Parliament House, the seat of the federal government here in OZ, and the National Art Gallery. I know I've already described how huge and empty Canberra is. We were really glad again today to have a car to drive around in! Canberra feels like one giant suburb - there have been times, as we've driven around, that I swear there's only roads and treed parkland here, and no buildings at all. Now having said that, Parliament House is not a building you can miss. It's situated on a hill right in the middle of the city, and any of the bridges that you take crossing Lake Burley-Griffin point directly towards it. There's also a huge and unforgettable flag pole on top. It's a very modern building (only completed/opened in 1988!) and reminded me somewhat of some of the, ah, stranger buildings you find in downtown Ottawa, like the new-old City Hall and the Museum of Civ.

We took a free guided tour of Parliament House and learned a little about its architecture and of course how Australian government operates.
Sidebar-Our tour guide was awful, just awful! He would start a topic and then jump back to a previous topic because he had forgot to mention something. He spent 5 minutes telling the group that he wasn't too sure about his facts so we shouldn't trust him about some things. The tour went over the alloted time (30 minutes), it was an hour and he kept saying that he would release us from his "clutches". One woman, next to us, started muttering under her breath about the tour guide being "Boring". I would have said that he deserved to be dragged out and staked to a fire ant colony.

The building is HUGE. Imagine all three blocks of our Parliament Hill AND the downtown convention centre all put together into one building, and you have an idea of the size we're talking about. I think the guide said that there are 4000+ rooms in the structure! The architecture is very symbolic, with parts of the building representing Australia's past, present and future. I really like how the building is built INTO the hill it stands on - and yes, there is green lawn that goes all the way over the top as part of the roof! This symbolises that the government works for the people, and that the people can always look down on the government and see what they are doing. All the interior spaces are designed this way too - with the public foyers etc. separate from those the parliamentarians work in, and above them - so the public can keep an eye on its elected officials.

The Australian government works similar to ours, with two houses of Parliament (a House of Representatives and a Senate). I liked how the House of Representatives sat in a green room, and the Senate sat in a red room (like us, they got their colour scheme from England) - but the colours were Australian greens and reds, apparently taken from the ever-present eucalyptus trees. The Senate is more American than ours is... the Senators are elected for terms of six years, instead of being appointed. The Coat of Arms was also explained to us - I had originally figured that the kangaroo and emu were on it because they're uniquely Australian animals. While this is true, the reason these two particular animals were chosen is because they are the only two animals that can't walk backward! They symbolize that Australia is always looking - and moving - forward. Cool!

By the time the tour was over and we'd finished wandering around on our own (among other things, we ended up chatting with another Canadian lady who was in our tour group and who'd seen the crest on my backpack; turns out she's from Ottawa, and she was in Canberra because her daughter was due to have a baby any day!), it was almost 2pm and we hadn't had lunch. We stopped at the cafe in Parliament House and grabbed a bite to eat, and then we were off to the National Art Gallery. On the map, the gallery is only a short way from Parliament, but wow I would not have wanted to walk that distance! This city is deceptive in how big it is. It was also well over 30C yesterday and any of the short while we spent outside on pavement felt somewhat like being in a blast furnace. When we got to the gallery, we had a hard time finding the parking... we ended up following a series of vague signs and parking two big blocks away at the National Library, then walking back along the water to the gallery. Let me tell you, we were glad to hit the air conditioning!

So far every attraction we've been to here has been free, and the National Art Gallery was no exception. They had artworks from many artists I recognize, including Picasso, Monet, and Renoir. Of course there were also lots of artworks by Australian artists. Jen and I spent quite a bit of time looking through the post-modern and pop art sections... mostly with our heads cocked to one side, muttering "I don't get it" under our breath! I know Jen was particularly annoyed with two works which were - seriously - white canvases hung on the wall. That's it! Nothing else!

Sidebar-I wasn't annoyed. I was angry. I can't believe that an art gallery would pay money for a canvas that had only white paint on it. The description said that I should appreciate the variety of white paints and brushstrokes that were used. IT WAS WHITE PAINT ON A WHITE CANAVAS. It was a cope out! It isn't Art if I can do it under less than fifteen minutes.

Of course there were some artworks that we really liked, too. One sculpture we found was called "Bone China", and consisted of a china cabinet filled with pieces of old ceramic plates that had been sculpted into the shapes of various bones - all scientifically labelled and displayed as a human skeleton! There was a grove of Aboriginal post sculptures, commemorating 200 years of European occupation of Australia. I also really liked one of the Aboriginal paintings that was displayed, framed, on the ground (since these types of paintings would have traditionally been painted outdoors on the ground, I like that some were displayed this way too) - the lines on this particular painting made the whole thing look like a 3D representation of the desert. Very cool.

Not surprisingly, we weren't allowed to take any pictures in the gallery, so you'll have to take my word on it that the place was pretty impressive. By the time we were leaving (at 5pm, with the gallery staff basically pushing us out the door as they closed) I had developed a wicked headache. So I'm glad I went to bed early - it took some serious painkillers to make the headache go away! I've had a headache pretty much every day since arriving in Canberra, and I'm hoping I finally managed to knock it down and make it go away.

Today we are going to celebrate the New Year by going on a platypus search! Wish us luck!