Australian War Memorial - Ishbel and Heidi's Girly Trip to Canberra

Tuesday 15th January 2008 - So our next stop was the Australian War Memorial http://www.awm.gov.au/ .
I don't know what Ishbel expected from a WAR memorial, but she had us scooting round there in no time flat, most of it 'freaking her out'. As we were just thinking about leaving a guided tour started and we joined it for a little while as the guide took us along the Roll of Honour and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We even managed to find a Colquhoun. The tens of thousands of names on the Roll of Honour, as always, overwhelmed me and I had a little weep. The guide told us that people put up poppies next to the names of family members but that this is something that started quite spontaneously in about 1994 after the interment of the Unknown Soldier.

Parliament House - Ishbel and Heidi's Girly Trip to Canberra

Tuesday 15th January 2008 - From the Mint we took a short trip to Parliament House http://www.aph.gov.au/ .
There we joined a tour that took us to the Great Hall, the House of Representatives and the Senate.
After that we took ourselves for a bite toe at then headed up to the roof. I love this building - what other Houses of Parliament allow their citizens to stomp all over it and let children roll down its side?
Ishbel wanted to go to the zoo next but by now it was very hot and I persuaded her that it might be better if we go to the zoo first thing tomorrow before it heats up and spend the rest of the day doing inside stuff.

The Royal Australian Mint - Ishbel and Heidi's Girly Trip to Canberra

Tuesday 15th January 2008 - Didn't have a great night last night. I was awake at 1:10am, 2:20am, 3:30am . . .
Despite that we were up and on our travels by 8:45am, first stop the Royal Australian Mint http://www.ramint.gov.au/about_ram/default.cfm .
Unfortunately for us, the Mint is undergoing a renovation that won't be completed until late 2008 so we weren't able to see the coin production at all. We'll just have to come back this time next year.
We did, however, get to mint our own $1 coin - and it only cost $2.60!!
We had to go down to the shop to get change; you'd think we were asking the lady to swap a doggy poo for 10c rather than 2 x 5c.
Ishbel was very pleased with her newly minted coin.

Evening of the first day - Ishbel and Heidi's Girly Trip to Canberra

Monday 14th January 2008 - Now it's just before 5pm and we've managed to find our motel; basic but clean. We'll head off about 5:30pm and try and find dinner. Ishbel wants Chinese tonight. But she also wants to be back in time to watch Top Gear - tonight they are showing the episode where we see Richard Hammond's crash.

National Dinosaur Museum - Ishbel and Heidi's Girly Trip to Canberra

Monday 14th January 2008 - The National Dinosaur Museum is just across the road from Cockington Green so we popped in there next http://www.nationaldinosaurmuseum.com.au/ .
At first I thought the $17 it'd cost us to get in was a rip off - there's not a huge amount to see and we were most of the way round the place within 10 minutes - but then a woman came to give us a guided tour and she was really good and I felt that I'd got my money's worth after all.
Down on the ground floor there were two enormous T-Rex's made from Knex - cool.

Cockington Green - Ishbel and Heidi's Girly Trip to Canberra

Monday 14th January 2008 - Our first 'attraction' visited was Cockington Green, a miniature village http://www.cockingtongreen.com.au/pages/index.asp .
It was there that we discovered the camera had no batteries in it. The first lot of batteries were the wrong ones and didn't fit and then I discovered (after an SOS call to Ian) that the film wasn't properly loaded and the camera wouldn't work until it was. Ishbel then ran off all 36 photos in under 10 minutes! I took the camera off her at that point.
Cockington Green has grown since we visited here with the boys in about 1998. The older part consists of miniatures representing quaint English village life. A new 'international' area has been created with buildings from various parts of the world, (castles, palaces, temples etc.) most of them sponsored by the embassies of the countries concerned, although a few have been sponsored by individuals. They really are very clever.

Drive down - Ishbel & Heidi's Girly Trip to Canberra

Monday 14th January 2008 - We left home at 8:05am. We had our first break in Bowral, having a nice Lamington and a custard doughnut with drinks. We also stopped at the Scottish shop outside Bowral where we bought a couple of mugs, one a with a Charles Rennie Macintosh design that I'd coveted when Gillian and I had passed through in October, and a Colquhoun tartan one for Ishbel.
Ishbel also wanted a little Westie dog but didn't like that I expected her to pay for it with her own money. After paying for the mugs I found her outside the shop in tears. I explained to her that the money in her account was money that had been sent to her at Christmas so she could buy herself presents with. She cheered up and we went back to the shop to purchase James Hawthorn Colquhoun.
And on to Canberra. We arrived at the Visitor Centre about 12:30pm and grabbed a pile of pamphlets and sat perusing a few as we ate our rolls.

Girly road trip and bits of news

Ishbel and I head down to Canberra this morning for a few days look around. We've booked in to an hotel for two nights and will head home again Wednesday afternoon.
We've had no news from Jamie. Since we haven't heard otherwise we are assuming he is still alive and kicking. His host family is probably giving a sigh of relief because today the school group reforms and they start travelling about.
Great news from Karen as you will see from her email this weekend. Our kids were very excited to hear that Ben will be staying down in our part of the world for a while. We learned this last weekend when Karen and Ben asked if Rob would give Ben a quick cook's tour of Springwood High School.

Jamie's itinerary

I've put his itinerary in the left hand column for those who are interested. We are unlikely to learn much until he comes back. He has been sent off with stickers to assist with postcard writing and has strict instructions to use each sticker but who knows . . .

Eve of Jamie's trip to Japan

Jamie leaves for a fortnight in Japan tomorrow morning.

I have spent all day running around getting him organised while he reads a book or XBoxes. Was getting a bit tetchy about that earlier.

We took a trip up to Echo Point (the Three Sisters), Katoomba this morning to get some touristy gifts for Jamie's host family. I thought it was the only touristy place in the mountains and had also been told that Blue Mountains City Council staff get a discount. I was wrong on the first - there is the Information Centre at Glenbrook - but right about the second - I got 20% off the cost of our purchases.

Asked the helpful man at the Echo Point Info Centre what the Japanese buy when they are there and came away with some native flora soaps, an aboriginal print scarf for the mother, a mug for the father, a baseball cap and wallet for the brother and a stuffed wombat and wallet for the girl, Nanako to add to the book and calendar we'd bought a little while ago.

When we left Springwood this morning the skies were dark and it was very cool. Katoomba is usually much colder than Springwood but by the time we got up there it was all blue skies and warm. The Three Sisters were looking lovely and we'd not thought to bring the camera (thinking it was going to be a lousy day) so bought a disposable one for some last minute snaps.

When we got back to Springwood I then had to go and find somewhere that could develop the film quickly. Also got some Tim Tams - biscuits which are very much like the British Penguin biscuits - apparently the Japanese think they are wonderful so I got 4 packs in different flavours.

I'm going to leave it at that, we have a rendez-vous at 7:30 tomorrow morning in Springwood. There is a bus taking the students, teachers and some parents down to the airport.