Day 13: tourists in Canberra

On our last whole day in Canberra we did a self-guided walking tour. First we went to see a local doctor. I’d been experiencing pain in my jaw and wondered if it was an ear infection. Turned out I wasn't. The doctor thought TMJ (jaw joint) pain due to more teeth grinding than I usually engage in. He gave me pain killers and told me to eat softer food for a few days. I hoped that as we decompressed in the coming days the pain would subside.

We stopped for an early lunch because there was a nice little bakery near the doctor, then we walked and walked. In fact we did a lot of walking in Canberra. After struggling to find parking for the tall motorhome on our way in on Thursday, we decided we’d try not to use the vehicle to get around while we were there. It is a bit of a business to pack everything up to drive, so you could put it down to laziness…except that it meant we walked an average of four and a half kilometres a day during our five day stay.

After lunch we walked to Lake Burley Griffin, a major feature of the city, named after the couple who designed the city. The walk we took around the central portion of the lake included most of a path called the R G Menzies Walk, named in acknowledgement of Sir Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest serving prime minister, who played a large part in the development of the city and the lake. 

Lake Burley Griffin

We stopped along the route quite a few times, reading plaques, enjoying the view, admiring statues and flags, trees and memorials. Towards the end we found the National Capital Exhibition, a free museum, where we learned much about how Canberra came to be selected as Australia's national capital, the city's design, and development. The settlement was just a village when it was announced as the future capital in 1913, 12 years after Australia was declared its own country (Federation, 1 Jan, 1901). And parliament only started meeting in the city in 1927! The city’s design is the result of an international competition won by an American (and his wife). It’s fascinating to see evidence that Australia struggled for a long time to be confident in the cleverness of its own people: places like Canberra and the Sydney Opera House were designed by non-Aussies. This Australian characteristic is known as “cultural cringe”. Thankfully we’re growing out of that!

I picked up a brochure at the National Capital Exhibition about the walk and realised that we’d seen quite a lot of things in our slow wanderings. We saw:

• 
  Captain Jamies Cook Memorial—Cook is the British explorer who “claimed” Australia for the Brits.
• Blundell’s Cottage—build in 1860, well before Canberra was the capital.
  
• Australians of the Year Walk—plaques for each year, so many familiar names!
• International Flag Display—representing those nations that maintain a diplomatic presence in Canberra.
• Even a Japanese Cherry Tree grove presented to Australia by the Japanese Prime Minister in 1980. Nara, an ancient capital of Japan, is one of Canberra’s sister cities.

It was a good long meander. We stopped by St John the Baptist Anglican Church and their graveyard as we got close to "home". It’s a historical church that predates Canberra by a long way (consecrated in 1845). I was surprised to find a bamboo cross gifted to the church in 1950 by an Anglican Church in Japan. The cross is inscribed with the words Reconciliation and Repentance. It was given in relation to the members of the church who were killed by Japanese in New Guinea during the Pacific War. (Read more here)

We went back at night time for a couple more photos, because the church is beautifully lit at nighttime.

It was a good day, but I can’t deny that it was shrouded with some pain for me. Eating, in particular, had become painful. Before dinner I took two of the strong painkillers that were prescribed for me early in the day, which helped, but also caused nausea later and I didn’t manage to keep my dinner down. Of course the slight rocking of the motorhome doesn’t help at such times! So the day ended with me retiring to bed very quickly and with no desire to read at all (very unusual).

And that was our first day of long service leave. Not bad, but I can’t deny that I was keen to move on to somewhere a little less urban.