Power to the people

Thursday, 20/09/2012 - 98 A.D.

Going back to Wednesday night and our triumphant session at the quiz, we still hadn’t met our roommates and it was gone 10.30. This wasn’t the end of the world, but when you’re going to be sleeping in a room with strangers you like to have a fair idea who they are, even if you don’t say a word to them. Tim didn’t sleep great the night before, so he turned in early, but I was still winding down from the excitement of winning the free jugs of beer. After watching a bit of telly in the lounge and seeing the clock pass midnight, I decided to hit the hay, but only after listening to a couple of chill-out tunes on the new iPod, so I stopped on the sofa by our room. Immediately two young ladies scampered (and I do mean “scampered”) past the sofa and I turned my head in time to see them enter our room. Now there was a bit of a dilemma – either go straight into the room to strike up conversation, yet look as though I’d purposely been waiting outside for their return, or leave it a while for them to get settled and lose the chance of, ahem, making new friends. I compromised and waited a few minutes.

Tim had been asleep, but he told me later that he woke up when our roommates arrived, but pretended to still be asleep because he didn’t want to go through all of the meet-and-greet malarkey, unlike his older brother. He said that the two girls, who were German (where else?) were chatting quietly to each other, but as soon as I entered the room they stopped talking completely. Who knows why, but it meant I felt a bit uncomfortable about starting any dialogue, so I just picked up my wash kit and went to clean my teeth. Unfortunately I didn’t take my swipe card with me, so couldn’t get back in the room and had to tap meekly at the door, hoping someone would come to my aid and I wouldn’t wake up people in the neighbouring rooms. One of the German girls opened the door for me, and smiled, but said nothing, so I just went to bed and made sure I didn’t stare across the room at them as I listened to the wisdom of Karl Pilkington on the iPod.

The alarm went off at 8.30 next morning and Tim and I were alone in the room. No worries, I took myself off for a shower to wash away the traces of beer from the night before. When I came back, one of the roommates was there, packing up. What you need to remember is that I was dressed only in my sleep shorts and a long way from being respectably clothed. After a good ten minutes I realised she wasn’t going anywhere, so not wanting to risk accidental exposure, I took myself back off to the showers to get changed. A little closer to check-out time, with all clothes on, we shared some conversation with the German girls, but nothing Earth-shattering. And thus the challenge of sharing a 4 bed dorm with two females is now complete and we won’t need to visit it again.

Time to explore Canberra, which has a very strong capital city feel to it, a little like Washington D.C.. Although we weren’t planning it, we stumbled into the flower festival on account of the site being quite close to the YHA. I’ve never been to the Southport Flower Show, so I’ve no idea what to expect, but I don’t really think this event is in Southport’s league, despite the reception girl saying that people come from as far away as Perth to attend. My opinion is that once you’ve seen one tulip you’ve seen them all, and I’ve been to Amsterdam (twice).

The weather was at that stage where it could go either way, which made us feel even more as though we weren’t in a typical Australian town. Canberra is not littered with billboards and posters advertising snorkelling dives, adventure treks or outback excursions like every other place we’ve passed through. There are lots of statues, lots of monuments, the streets are planned and all lined with trees, and the grass is actually green. Quotes from former prime ministers are etched into marble walls and black swans glide across the still waters of Lake Burley Griffin under the watchful eye of Captain James Cook ,who of course discovered the island in the first place.  

As we headed towards Capitol Hill, our route took us through a miniscule piece of bush land, but suddenly from out of said bush appeared a kangaroo! It bounded across the path and into the other side of the bush, leaving us stunned. Yes, we’d seen and stroked plenty at Australia Zoo, but this was a wild kangaroo, messing around a few hundred metres from where the Australian Parliament sits. We didn’t want to venture into the undergrowth, but we were keen to get a closer look, so we split into a circling movement of the area, hoping to draw it out. Tim succeeded in sending it my way, but the critter was that fast a hopper that by the time I’d got the camera ready for snapping, Skipper had hopped off into the distance. Despite an extensive roo search of the area, we never saw it again.

The Australian parliament building is open to the public and we went inside for a stroll. There are various displays that you can wrap your minds around, such as What is democracy?, portraits of governor-generals past and present, details on what the Queen’s role in the whole thing is, and photos of every member of the Aussie parliament. We also got to go into the public gallery and watch over the daily business of the house. Unfortunately it wasn’t a cut-`n`-thrust session of prime minister’s question time (for that you need tickets), rather there were about five people in the whole house, including the speaker, and a member of the opposition was droning on about the problems with the country’s dental care system. We were only in there for about five minutes, but I almost dozed off. There was an amusing incident when a lady went through the security scanner and had to remove her shoes because of the metal tags. She then continued into the gallery, leaving her shoes still on the desk, to the bemusement of the security guards who didn’t see her wander off.

So that was the new parliament building and at the other end of Federation Mall was the old parliament building, which really didn’t look that old. These days it serves as a museum, which we didn’t enter, and across the grass from it sits a small porter cabin with “Aboriginal Embassy” painted upon it. There was no chance such a structure would be permitted to stand outside the new parliament building, although inside that we had seen a small exhibit detailing how the government recently said sorry to the aboriginal peoples for the horrors of the stolen generation when aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families. I’ve not said a great deal about the aborigines in this blog, mainly because I really haven’t mixed with them, though I have seen them out and about, but that has been less and less the further south we’ve got. Basically, whatever you have heard about the situation over here, from what I can tell it’s all true. 

Strolling away from Capitol Hill, we came across a sculpture garden which contained either a prototype or a rip-off of the Angel of the North. It also contained millions of school kids, they really are everywhere and it must be an annual pilgrimage for schools to send their pupils to the capital territory the same way that ours go on trips to London. I tried to do one of my planks leaning against a metallic sculpture, but I couldn’t keep my back straight enough. Plus the school kids were pointing and laughing.

Our final port of call was the Australian War Memorial, which is more of a museum than a memorial, and is the other main thing that you go and see when in Canberra besides the parliament building. By this point we were a bit knackered from much walking, so after making it through the first world war exhibits, we were a little dismayed to realise that we still had the second world war to get through. That said, it was an excellent all-round display, as you’d expect from a museum in a state capital. Every day at five o`clock they have a closing ceremony in which they commemorate a particular act of bravery, then finish with a blast from a bagpiper. Quite moving, really.

So that was Canberra, capital of the great nation of Australia and unlike any other city on this massive island. We were only staying the one night, which didn’t give us enough time to grow any marijuana for personal consumption. We’re currently camped out at the YHA, waiting for the night bus to Melbourne. Maybe we’ll meet Swiss Simon at the bus stop and see if his baptism the other day has caused him to stop smoking. Tim’s has done nothing for him except helped bring on a cold, though the beer from the quiz may also have helped with that.

All around us school kids are trying to sneak into their friends’ dormitories and teachers are yelling at them to stay in their own rooms. Looks like the YHA is going to be full for a while. I’m almost glad to be sleeping on the bus tonight!