Monday 29 September 2014

Week Twelve

Parliament House

Chinese Embassy

Lake Burley Griffin



Australian Senate



Hey guys, welcome once again to Week Twelve at JayceDownUnder! At the conclusion of this week, I will officially have a month  left in Australia and the countdown to my return to America will begin. With the end of the semester approaching rapidly, things are beginning to heat back up workload-wise. I guess the stressful, end-of-semester crunch time isn't just unique to American universities. But anyways, this week's blog post will probably be slightly more interesting than some of the previous week's entries. That's because, this week, I'm going to be discussing my recent visit to Canberra, the national capitol of Australia!

Alright, before I begin, I should probably share a few basic details about the city of Canberra. It's actually pronounced Can-bruh, as I was fortunate enough to learn prior to my visit to Australia so as to avoid pronouncing it the way it's actually spelled. As I said earlier, it is the capitol of the entire country, the equivalent of our Washington D.C. And like D.C., it does not belong to any state. The "district" in which it is located is called the ACT (Australian Capitol Territory, not the standardized test). The ACT is a lovely place with lots of nature (including the beautiful man-made lake pictured above) and is a bit colder and more temperate than Wagga and other parts of Australia. In fact, the weather and lots of the trees that been introduced and planted gave it a kind of European/ North American feel. Canberra is also an intricately-planned out city, it is very symmetrical, which works out very well for a foreign tourist such as myself.


As for the things I did while in Canberra, I was elated by the amount of historical things available to do. Regrettably, I don't know nearly as much about Australian history as I do American and European history,so I found the trip to be a wonderful learning experience. Perhaps the highlight of my short trip was my visit to the Australian parliament, a large, majestic building with over 4,500 rooms! Needless to say, I was unable to see the majority of them, but a free guided tour took me to the House of Representatives and Senate chambers (as pictured above). In the process, I received a free lecture that taught me that the house has 150 members; and the Senate 76. Like the US, the House of Representatives is based on proportional representation (out of 150 federal electorates) and the Senate on equal representation (12 for each state, two each for the Northern Territory and the ACT). Having never been to D.C., I've never visted a national capitol before, so getting to experience the center of Australian federal politics was an amazing experience.

The Chinese Embassy pictured above was not the only embassy I visited. In fact, there were several streets, like a small housing division full of different embassies. In fact, I spent the better part of an hour walking around looking at all the different ones. Each embassy was built to reflect the culture of the nation it represented, with the Chinese embassy having a traditional tile roof and the Papua New Guinea embassy with an usual tribal design on its steepled roof. Photographic evidence of all the embassies I got around to seeing is provided on my Facebook page.

After I was done at the embassies and Parliament House, I made the long (at least an hour) walk across town to the Australian War Memorial. The museum is billed as one of the world's great museums and it certainly lives up to the billing. In many ways, the setup of the museum and the presentation of the exhibits reminded me of the National World War I museum in Kansas City. While at the museum, I was fortunate enough to be present during the closing hour, where a closing ceremony was held by the "pool of reflection" in the museum's outdoor area. The ceremony was dedicated to one Australian WWII veteran in particular, with some of his relatives there to place flowers at the base of his photo on display. Following this very moving ceremony, I made the return trip to my hostel along ANZAC Parade street, which was lined by memorials for the different wars Australia has been involved in.

So, overall, Canberra was yet another successful and enjoyable adventure here in Australia. This upcoming weekend, I will be taking a journey to Melbourne (the country's second largest city). From what I've heard, the consensus seems to be that Melbourne is better than Sydney. I've been told it is a very European-esque city, so as someone who's never been to Europe, I'm pretty excited to see what it's like. The weather here in Australia has finally begun to get hot, this week's forecast predicts several days to be in the mid to upper seventies, so that's quite exciting. But on that note, I leave you all and look forward to sharing the details of my Melbourne trip with you for Week Thirteen. 






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