March 1

This past weekend we had to do training in Canberra. We were pretty excited because we've never been to Canberra before. It's about a three hour drive south of Sydney. This trip was our first time out of the state of New South Whales. Canberra is located in ACT, Australian Capital Territory; it's the Washington D.C. of Australia. Apparently, many many years ago there was quite a ruckus between Melbourne and Sydney vying for the honor of being the capital of the country. Because there was so much trouble between the cities, it was decided that they would find a spot halfway between Sydney and Melbourne to be the capital. Canberra was the winner, so the area surrounding Canberra is called ACT; it's much like the District of Columbia in the US. Australia has 6 states and two territories, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. ACT is basically made up of Canberra and the surrounding cities; ACT is very small, especially by Australian standards! We drove down Wednesday night because we wanted a to have a little time to check out the city before our evening meetings.  We started at the government buildings early in the morning. We spent a little time in the Parliament building where all the government action took place until a few years ago when they moved to a newer and bigger building.

This is the main room where the governing of Australia happened for many, many years.

This is a mock up of the crown jewels and the associated royalty paraphernalia, the originals are in London!

This is the mace; it is carried in by the speaker of the house and nothing can happen in a session unless the mace is here , resting in it's holder.

The new Speaker of the House!

This the the chair the Speaker of the House must be sitting in throughout the entire session. It was beautiful and has lots of ornate carving, some of the wood used in the chair is from England and dates way back to the early 1200s. 

One thing I found very interesting is that it is compulsory to vote in Australia. If you don't vote you have to pay a huge fine! We toured a lot of government offices, but I won't bore you with all that.


Directly across a huge pavilion area, is the War Memorial. We absolutely loved this building and wished we had more time to spend there. We spent about three hours, but that short amount of time barely allowed us to make a dent in seeing all that was available. The Australians are very, very loyal to their ANZAC soldiers from WWI and this building began as a tribute to the dead from that war. Once Britain joined WWI, Australia was automatically committed as well because at that time, they were part of Britain. Australia was a fairly young country then and their loss of 60,000 men devastated their land. They opened their doors to immigrants and began to slowly rebuild their country. When WWII came along, their losses were big, but nothing like the amount they lost in WWI. It seems that WWII is the big war we always hear about in the US and I was always under the impression it was the worst war of the two, but for Australia, WWI was the worst war because of the impact losing such a huge portion of their working citizens had on their country.

This life size statue is a tribute to John Simpson who landed with the ANZAC troops at Gallipoli. Gallipoli is where the ANZAC troops fought and were so decimated. Sergeant Simpson would carry water up to the troops on his donkey and then haul wounded men down. He is famous because the Australian's feel that he exemplifies the Australian value of self-sacrifice.  

This was a huge long wall called the Roll of Honor. You can't see it here, but in between the rows of flowers are the names of all those Australians who died in World War I. The red flowers are poppies and signify the flowers from the poem, In Flanders's Field.  http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm

It's hard to get the perspective, my little camera doesn't do the job very well, this picture was taken from the steps of the War Memorial looking down across to the Parliament Building.

This is the center of the War Memorial building. The reflection pool has an eternal flame burning and through the door at the end of the center is the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier. The Aussies borrowed some ideas from the US.

After we left the War Museum we spent quite a bit of time in meetings, but then we got up early on Friday morning and drove to the Snowy Mountains. The 1980s movie Man From Snowy River was the impetus to get us headed down the road in that direction. Also, Aaron's wife Jessica's name was inspired by Jessica in the movie. The country was beautiful and it reminded me a lot of the mountains outside of Boise, the ones before you get to the really huge mountains. Much of the country reminded me of the Palouse area of northern Idaho. The odd thing though was that there were no pine trees, not even one!! Instead there are eucalyptus and gum trees. It was pretty odd to be in the mountains but never see a pine tree!

Jindabyne is one of the first cities as you enter the Snowy mountains.  I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that Jindabyne is an Aborigine word, at least it sounds like one! 

Again, my little camera doesn't do justice to the view, but you can get an idea of the valley with the mountains in the background.

Here's the very beginning of the Snowy River. The headwaters are right under the dam.

We stopped at the ski lift and bought a ticket to the top. It was just us and the mountain bikers!

This mountain is the highest spot in all of Australia!!!

Here we are riding up in the middle of eucalyptus trees, not a pine tree in sight!

The ski runs don't look too tough, at least if you compare them to what we have in Idaho!  However, Thredbo is where Tora Bright skied and she was an Olympic skier, so there must be more to this place than meets the eye!

The silver poles sticking up are snow making machines. Even though this is the highest mountain in all of Australia, apparently Mother Nature needs a little help making enough snow in the winter!

It's a little rocky at the top.

The view from the top of the ski lift.

This is a picture I took of a picture they have of the mountain in winter. 

As we left the ski hill we saw a mama kangaroo and her baby just hanging out, resting in the shade.

This ranch (you can barely see it in the distance) is in the area I imagine the ranch from the movie looked like.

They have a huge set of reservoirs thats supply 9 dames with the power needed for this area of Australia.

This is the spillway on the dam that feeds this reservoir, no water flowing today though,

This reservoir was right by the Bed and Breakfast we stayed at.

This couple were our hosts at the Bed and Breakfast we stayed at. We loved their house and enjoyed their company. Joe immigrated from Venice, Italy when he was 24 years old to work on the big dam project in the Snowy Mountains. I loved his accent! 

The last town we visited before we headed down out of the mountains.