The Kronikles of Tony and Ruth
Day 40 - Tuesday 8 August 2006
Well sports fans it's getting near the end and I'm finding it hard to keep the krons interesting. Having dropped south out of my compadres range it has been get up, have coffee, tour, tour, wash down the best meal one can get hold of with a reasonable bottle of wine, perhaps watch some TV and then Bono Reposo. Why, yesterday I had a rush of blood and even got into religion and politics. Bear with me my friends.
Minus eight degrees celcius last night, a rosy dawn and it's a proposed walking day today. Destination: War Memorial, route: Canberra Central, Reid shopping centre, machiatto, latte, Glebe Park (peopled by black, bare European trees), suburbia and Anzac Av. At Anzac turning left we pass monuments to Vietnam, Korea, the infantry and a mounted battalion.
At the museum, in the aircraft section, there is a "sound and light" enactment of a night air raid over Germany. It is built around the resident and fully restored Lancaster bomber "G for George" The show is loud, blinding and takes me back to the time when I was refugee kid with the arse torn out of my trousers heading for the air raid shelter in the middle of the night. I was not so much terrified as annoyed at being forced to leave my bed.
After a lunch of pumpkin, lentil and bacon soup, Ruth is keen to visit the memorial part of the museum. Doing a fly over of the WW1 & WW2 displays (one could spend weeks) we proceed to the inner sanctum of the centre. The shrine is a powerful expression of secular spirituality. We note that there are some solemn Japanese visitors. The memorial wall, with it's thousands of poppies inserted at names of war dead is a sobering reminder of the evil in selfishness and how little humans have progressed towards conflict resolution. The slaughter goes on.
In the sharp sunlight we leave the War Museum down the left side of Anzac expression Avenue lined by Navy, Nurses and Air Force memorials. Each and every one of these is a product of the sentiment in the eras of their installation. The variation in styles is broad and the composition, message and artwork are thought provoking.
Tired, our doggies barking, we return to Reid via Glebe Park and do not resist King O'Malleys Irish Pub where we apply the brown, frothy anaethetic (hush puppies!). Coffee, dinner at the Apartments then back to our room where we find census forms slipped under the door. We are very tired and fall asleep while filling out these forms.
Memorial Wall - Canberra |
