Well first of all, Happy belated Birthday to the Queen!!! I had Monday
off because it was her birthday. Yes people I survived Yum Cha! It was pretty good actually. I had deep fried beef, calamari, duck, mango pancakes, lemon cakes, spring rolls, vegetable and prawn dim sum, and many other things that I dont remember. Basically you sit down and the trolleys are rolled over to the table and you just start loading plated on the table. It was a wee bit pricey ($35) but it was an experience.
I left on Saturday morning on the train bound for Canberra
located in the Australian Capital Territory. Pretty much the same as Washington
in the District of Colombia from what I can tell. Just a note that I have never
been to DC so I cant really compare anything. Apparently there was some disagreement between
Sydney and Melbourne for the capital so they compromised in the middle (sort
of). The train trip was about 4 hours long and this time I actually enjoyed it.
There was no one sitting next to me and it was light out so I could watch the
beautiful scenery go by. It turns out that NSW has some pretty nice hills like
Victoria does. I wouldn’t have known that otherwise. The trip was uneventful,
thank goodness. I was anxious we might get a medical emergency, or a broken
down freight car, or even a car accident like last time but nothing!
While I was on the train I was silently applauding myself
for packing for the trip in nothing but the cloud not even an additional purse.
You can pretty much bring as much luggage as you want on the train but I knew I
would be carrying whatever I brought around all day long so I didn’t pack much. This was a first
for me and one of the main reasons I could never be a backpacker (I will just
pretend I would be brave enough to do that). Anyway, well I was in the middle
of singing my praises I realized that I had not brought any identification.
Okay people the single most important thing you can bring as a traveler is your
passport!!! What an idiotic mistake! You need it to confirm your hotel room,
identify yourself for the train ticket, and even get into some government
buildings! Idiot!!! I hoped for the best on that one and it turned out okay
luckily! That could have been really bad. What a rookie mistake!
Once I arrived in Canberra I knew that transportation was
going to be tricky. If I opted for a cab it was $25 and the tourist bus was $30
for the day. Well come to find out the tourist bus didn’t even service the
station so that option was out. I saw some fellow passengers huddled at the bus
stop so I went over with them. I paid $4.80 and got on the bus which took me to
the center of town. On the way there I glimpsed the War Memorial which was
exciting.
When I got to the town center I knew I needed an ACTION card
which is their public transport card. I went to the convenience store on the
corner and purchased one. This wasn’t without hassle as each state has a limit
to how much you can be charged for transport in one day but I didn’t know what
the limit was in ACT so I asked. The clerk didn’t know either so I ended up
with $20 on the card and I had to pay $5 for the card. That also varies because
in NSW, Opal cards are free but I know the Myki cards in Victoria were $6 so it
just depends. Anyway, I had the card and was ready to roll.
I wanted to see the Mint for sure and I knew it was the
thing that was located furthest away from my “hotel” so I went for that first.
I basically hopped on the bus and hoped for the best…bad idea. The buses were
clean and empty but the stops were not what I was expecting at all. If you were
going to the Mint for instance it wouldn’t say “Mint” it would say
Bradburn/Livingston or something equally not helpful. So I ended up at another
bus station. Luckily the next driver was uber helpful on that. It was a bit
longer walk but it was the best that could be done and better than where I was
getting otherwise.
The Mint was amazing. I had originally just wanted to go
because I wanted to mint my own coin (you can and I did) but I am so glad that I went!
Australian coin history is really interesting! Some highs of the tour were:
1: The officers who looked after the prisoners were paid in
rum so there were houses that were actually being bought with rum! They stopped
that though because wives were also being traded for rum…
2:They discontinued the 1 and 2 cent pieces in Australia
because nothing could be bought for that amount anymore and it was costing more
to produce the coins than they were worth.
3: If another coin is discontinued it would be the 5 cent
coin because it costs 6 cents to make it and again nothing can be bought for
that amount anymore. The tour guide said it was really unlikely that would
happen any time soon though. She said it is the most popular coin and it would
make giving change difficult.
4: The reason that the $2 coin is smaller than the $1 coin
is because the government decided after the $1 coin had been minted that it
wanted a $2 coin and the mint couldn’t go any bigger. The Kiwis take pride in
the fact that their currency is correct: The $1 is smaller than the $2. There
is an intense but friendly rivalry between the two countries and sadly the
Kiwis got the upper hand on that one.
5: The man who won the original design competition for
Australian currency worked for the mint for like 40 years and then retired from
that to become the personal jewelry designer to the Queen!
6: The 2000 Olympic medals were made at the mint. The Bronze
was made from recycled 1 and 2 cent pieces because it meant that each medal hand
been touched by all the citizens.
7: Paper money is made in note printing Victoria and their
money is recycled into trash containers.
8: Australia did not have its own currency for many years
because they used the currency found washed up on shore from trade ships. It
got tricky paying for something in Dutch coins and getting change in Rupees
though. They liked to cut coins in pieces to make change as well but then the
medal degraded a lot quicker.
9: England sent 40000 Spanish coins to Australia because
they were experiencing a coin shortage and they had extra of those laying
around. The Governor of Australia had a convicted felon stamp out the center of
each coin and mint it so then they had 80000 coins. Yes the convict was in
prison for currency forgery so he had the knowledge.
10: These donut coins from #9 resemble washers and are worth
a lot of money! One sold the other day for overall half a million dollars.
Basically they are the first minted coins in Australia. They are rare because
people did use them as washers. There is a story that a farmer was having a bad
day and to top it off his tractor broke down in the field. When he lifted the
hood he found a donut coin. Needless to say his day and life got a lot better!
11: The 50 cent piece use to be round but it was too close
in size to the 20 cent piece so they changed it. It also used to contain 80%
silver because the government wanted it to be special. Unfortunately, people
figured out the silver was worth 57 cents so they were hoarding them and it had
to be changed to less silver content.
12: Apparently there are some $1 coins here that have the 10
cent piece design on them and they are worth $500.
13: The Queen’s picture has changed over time to account for
her aging!I would have never noticed that.
Those last two were courtesy of a guy I met in the lobby who
was really disappointed that I hadn’t been to our mint in the US…
Well after the Mint I was going to go to the Dinosaur Museum
but that didn’t pan out. For one the bus would have gotten me there like an
hour after closing and for two I had spent that money on a nice Two-up (game
from Anzac Day) set…beautiful I might add. So I then went back to the station
to take the bus as close to the embassies as I could get. Lucky for me I got
the same uber helpful bus driver…not so lucky for him! He dropped me off at the
closest point and I was able to walk to see several embassies. There was the
Chinese embassy which was on a grand scheme and has often been said it belongs
in DisneyLand but hey go big or go home. The British one was very cold and
clean. The New Zealand one was like the British one but had a lot of windows
giving it a more environmental look. The Canadian one has maple leaves stamped
in the concrete and a big totem pole out front. The totem pole threw me off
because that isn’t what I think of when I think of Canada. Anyway the Papua New
Guinea one was the best as it had like hand carved masks covering its exterior.
The South African one was out of this world beautiful. I looked into that and apparently it is rare for South Africa to even have an embassy.
After I had seen enough
embassies I went for a walk along Lake
Burley Griffin which I was told is Australia’s biggest manmade lake. I just discovered
that it is named after Walter Burley Griffin, the AMERICAN architect who won
the competition to design the city of Canberra! Anyway the walk was nice
because there was a beautiful Chinese Garden and the water was so peaceful. I
could see the National Museum, Black Mountain, and the water geyser from there.They had the weirdest statue there of a horse stepping on a swallow to represent the agility of the horse or something...it makes me laugh still...
It was getting dark by then so I decided to head to my
lodgings. This time I opted for a dorm room in university housing which was
actually quite nice. It hadn’t been renovated in a really long time and
everything was very basic but man was that one clean room! I was impressed (yes
Andrea I left housekeeping a nice note and tip, you’ve taught me well). I also
had a balcony that offered a wonderful view. The room was located on the campus
of ANU (Australian National University). So I will just go ahead and cross
staying in a dorm room off my list. Getting there on the bus was a bit tricky
but I made a new friend who knew right where I needed to get off. It was
humorous though because I was complaining about the buses instead of Sydney
Trains and she had lived in Sydney for 12 months and of course hated it. She
said there were too many people and it was dirty. I took personal offense to
that! Yes Canberra was cleaner and had less people but I still like Sydney
better. Sydney has life to it I would say is the best way to put it.
View from balcony
The next morning I was determined to get to the War Memorial
so go I did. It was really massive. The grounds themselves were a museum. There
were lots of statues which makes me think that is something I don’t see much
back home and it pretty cool. There were trees that had importance for one
reason or another. One was planted by the Queen or something and one was from a
cone that was retrieved from Gallipoli. There were military devices scattered
about as well. The museum inside of the War Memorial was beautiful and covered
everything I would say. They had uniforms, planes, medals, statues, etc. When
you enter the Memorial you see the walls of remembrance and the eternal flame. I
was on a mission though.
So when I went to the Poppy Park in Penrith I had purchased
4 Poppies and they arrived just before I left on my trip. I copied down the
information off each flower determined to put a poppy by their names at the
memorial. The staff was really helpful with printing me off the location of
each name and a little about them. I was able to make that happen with their
help. Although I think they were puzzled why I had an American accent and four
different deceased Australian Soldiers names. I had some leftover poppies so I
put those by the soldiers with the last name Phillips on the wall. Most of them
already had flowers though but a few didn’t. Popular name here! Good taste what can I say. Then I put some
on the current wall memorial for some reason it was that one that affected me the
most. Some flowers that were there had pictures on them with a little about the
people and it made it that much more real.
There was also a statue of Nike in the museum that was really breathtaking. I enjoy learning about mythology and to see it incorporated into history this way was nice I think. So it was called Winged Victory and was originally located in the town of Marrickville which had a population of about 35,000 and 450 of their men lost their lives in WWI. This huge sculpture was created for the town square to "mark a town's sorrow at its loss and pride in the achievements of its sons." The description on the statue tells of how Australia gained major confidence in its place in the world after WWI. How the men came home to what they believed to be everlasting peace but it was not to be. That room was dedicated to the stories of the widows, the psychological impacts, and the physical handicaps that resulted from the war. It was my favorite room.
After that I walked down the center
of the city basically the part that runs from The War Memorial to The
Parliament House. There were many statues in remembrance of each war.
Parliament
War Memorial
Then I
loaded back on the bus because my train to come back left at 5pm and I didn’t want
to miss it. The train trip back was nice as well. I sat next to a chatty
Cathy so you know I was all about that. And that was the end of that. Overall
it was a good trip. I liked it there (but not better than Sydney or Melbourne).
The public transport was a big negative but the cleanliness and lack of people
was refreshing. The cleanliness was a little sterile though as it isn’t as if
Sydney is dirty. I would go back if I had the time but I don’t. I saw the
things that were most important to me but there are tons of things to see and
like 90% of everything is free. I am not interested in US politics and although
Australian politics seem much more lively I didn’t need to see inside the
Parliament. Did I mention I really liked the Mint?
Other pictures (and these found bigger...looking at you Amigo) can
be found here.
I will end here wishing everyone a happy week!
