Canberra

We took a 3.5 hour bus ride from Sydney to Canberra, the capitol of Australia, to see all the federal museums and buildings. We spent a total of 2.5 days there and went to 4 huge museums/exhibits/buildings - who knew walking around could be so exhausting!

View of Canberra's layout from the top of Mount Ainslie:

We started at the War Memorial. It was a beautiful building and there was an awesome kids section that had uniforms and stages set up. Of course, this is where I gravitated after looking through all the real exhibits.

WWI:

Photos from the Vietnam War:

The Cold War:

The next day we went to Parliament, then an art gallery! Parliament was beautiful and we had a great tour.

Parliament is aligned perfectly with the old Parliament bulding and the War Memorial across the river. This is to remind politicians of the freedoms and rights that soldiers have died to preserve, and which they must uphold in all their legislation. Here's the front of Parliament:

The inner atrium is gorgeous! There's such beautiful woodwork all through Australia:
The House of Representatives is a blue-themed room, and there are 156 (I believe) representations from the different states and territories.

The Senate has a pink-theme. Teehee! These colors are REAL!

Standing on the roof of Parliament with Coop and looking to the south of the city (here's dress number 5!):

Standing on the roof! They have a beautiful grass lawn on the roof (crazy) and behind us you can see the War Memorial and Old Parliament building in the background.

The huge flag on top of Parliament - it's large enough that you can hide a double-decker bus behind the flag!

The last day in Canberra, we went to the AWESOME National Museum! It covered Australian history in amazing detail and had tons of amazing exhibits. It also had a really great current exhibit on what the present state of Australia is like, and how this might change in the future. It had lots of really interesting artifacts and a really great way of presenting it. Here's the inner courtyard:

Cool speakers that isolate sound so you can watch a video without bugging everyone else!

Fire prevention in Australia:

This truck is used for catching wild buffalo:

Crazy statue outside the museum:

We then flew from Canberra back to Brisbane in the afternoon, and ended up watching Big Game in the airport using someone's laptop and some speakers:

We were definitely pretty rowdy, but no one in the waiting area begrudged us our game because they could tell it was REALLY IMPORTANT. And then, in the last 30 seconds... well, I don't want to talk about it, it's too painful. But anyways, we settled down pretty quickly after the end of the game and had a nice quiet flight back to Brisbane. Now we're beginning the lecture series for the class - it isn't ALL fun and games (only 95% fun and games), but we're in the nicest facilities EVER! We're staying on the University of Queensland campus in dorms, and we get our OWN ROOMS. After living in research station bunks or hostels, it's so nice to have a little personal space. We'll be here for the remaining time in Brisbane and I'm so excited for what's still to come!