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| Tidbinbilla River to the south of Canberra |
I don't think we ventured more than about 50km from home during our COVID gap-year, which is 45km further than Victorians could go but hey, we're old and we have the odd existing condition which wouldn't necessarily sit well with a potentially fatal respiratory condition so no complaints here. But with light at the end of the NSW tunnel we decided that a short sojourn was in order. Queensland was out of the question but there was one border open to New South Welshpersons and that was the Australian Capital Territory - Canberra. And not just Canberra but Canberra in spring albeit without a Floriade as we've all come to know it.
It was also a chance to catch up with friends not seen during COVID except via Zoom and others not seen at all for several years. With this very much in mind we hit the beautiful Southern Highlands on the way down and what a good decision that was because the whole region was in full and rather glorious bloom. The purpose of the diversion was to visit our old friends Allan and Ian who own the Bundanoon Bloomery which you will not being surprised to know is in the very heart of Bundanoon right next to the old bakery which is owned by Will who is another friend from the same era. Will's tenant moved out a couple of months ago so he was down there doing major renovations. It was happy catch ups all around.
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| A magnolia in Bowral |
So with friendships renewed and a couple of excellent salad rolls from the Primula Cafe under our belts it was back on the road to Canberra and the Forrest Hotel and Apartment which, just like your lack of surprise at the Bundanoon Bloomery being in Bundanoon, is in the suburb of Forrest which abuts Capital Hill upon which sits the Parliament of Australia. In fact you could see the iconic flagpole from the kitchen of our apartment.
Canberra Accommodation Tip #1
Canberra has become a city of fairly smart hotels, the bloody things are everywhere. They are all overpriced and they all charge for parking which just pisses me right off. For Christ sake, it's Canberra not Paris! Last time we stayed in Washington DC parking was part of the deal but not Canberra these days unless you stay at the Forrest Hotel and Apartments which is actually a large family-run motel with a number of two-storey apartment buildings adjoining. I'm talking very well maintained, spotlessly clean 1970s accommodation. If you're staying more than a few days I highly recommend their one or two bedroom apartments.
The Forrest Hotel is directly opposite the National Jewish Centre which we hoped to visit in order to check out their museum but it closes at 4 o'clock and it was just about that time when we pulled into hotel reception. We went across nevertheless just to take a few pictures of the outside to post on Facebook the following day being, as it was, Rosh Hashanah. That's when we met our newest best friend Tammy who is a board member there. She invited us in, introduced us around then took us on our own personal tour of the centre which included the Progressive Synagogue, the Orthodox Synagogue and the much anticipated museum. We felt quite special and were welcome to stay as long as we wanted but Tammy had to head back out to her car and bring in some chickens for the following evening's celebration dinner - rather stereotypical, as she herself happily admitted.
Canberra Tucker Tip #1
And speaking of chicken, the Forrest Hotel is only a ten minute walk from rather smart Manuka and a dozen or so good restaurants, one of which is my favourite in the entire world. It serves the best thing I've ever eaten and I've done so many times - shan tung chicken. Their English spinach with garlic runs a close second and we order both along with steamed rice, nothing complicated.
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| Shan Tung Chicken & English Spinach with Garlic | |
How many galleries is too many galleries? In my case the answer is 8 ibuprofen worth. The NGA is in a state of reorganisation under its new director who is taking the place off in a slightly more eclectic curatorial direction. The entire centre of them gallery around where 'Blue Poles' was formerly housed is currently being redeveloped and the Jackson Pollack classic is now upstairs in the north-eastern corner undergoing public conservation which is art in itself. My favourite picture in the entire gallery has long been 'Bob' by Chuck Close. Most people dismiss it as just a huge monochrome photograph but it's actually the best example of photo realism I've ever seen - a painting. That is now upstairs near 'Blue Poles' and all of the other modern classics which formally hung in the centre of the ground floor.
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| 'Blue Poles' |
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| 'Bob' |
We ducked away for lunch then returned to visit the National Portrait Gallery which is just across the way. They had an extremely engaging exhibition called 'Pub Rock' which features photographic images of Australian bands and artists from the 70s and 80s so what's not to like about that?! I was astounded by how many I recognised and how many of their gigs I've been to. It was an entire lifetime ago but it was nice to shuffle down memory lane for an hour.
And an hour is all you get, two at the NGA. Both galleries have ticketed timed visits at the moment because of COVID. They're still free but you need to go online and book a slot which I don't see as a problem but then I choose life over life-support or worse still a cremator.
The National Library of Australia is always good for a visit if only for the amazing lead lights in the cafe and bookshop and the bookshop itself. In addition to their usual treasures they currently have a photographic exhibition of Australian homes over the last two hundred years which struck a chord with me, my family home having been so recently demolished.
Pain put paid to our plan to visit the Museum of Democracy at historic Old Parliament House so we went back to the apartment for some pre-dinner ibuprofen and vodka but not before taking a turn around Canberra's newest smart area by the lake at Kingston which ironically enough adjoins its most down-at-the-heel in Causeway.
Causeway was an early failed attempt at public housing which was boldly reinvented in the 70s but doomed to fail again. It is a very un-Canberra grid of identically modest houses which I will be generous by saying were probably of a slightly innovative design for the time but way too small and very isolated. The area awaits demolition but there is life in the old girl yet. Children play in its quiet street and bogans are celebrated, none more than at the house on a particular corner which isn't very difficult to find, just look for the extensive fleet of car wrecks.
And being on a corner they have access to two verges on which to spill their precious cargo or more's the point, car-not-go. There were at least a dozen of them, probably more. Some were in a possible state of repair, others in a definite state of cannibalisation, but my very favourite was a Kingswood with a Victa lawnmower protruding through its broken rear window - a perfect, if slightly odd, marriage of two Australian icons! Every fibre of my being wanted to stop and take photographs but at least two of the residents were roaming the site in a way that reminded me of docked-tailed Dobermans and I didn't want DeDe to be captured - or us for that matter!
Do you remember The Cars That Ate Paris from way back in 1974? That was Paris, Australia of course, not Paris, France. I have serious reason to believe that 1 Marri Street, Causeway might well have been the inspiration for that particular cult movie classic.
That evening saw us on our first ever Uber journey across the lake to our good friend Anne, sister of one of my oldest friends Kim who was down for a few days. We hadn't seen Anne for several years and Kim for almost a COVID year so it was a wonderful catch up which included dinner and constant admiration of what Anne has recently done with her kitchen and the living areas of her house. The woman has extraordinary taste and the name of an excellent tradesman and I do mean tradesman not tradie. Ample wine and an Uber ride back to Forrest.
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| Kim & Anne with the Musical Fridge |
Next
morning saw us ride the new Canberra Light Rail from Civic to Gungahlin and
back. It's the beginnings of what will
be an excellent addition to Canberra's public transport system but it did leave
me wondering why anyone would want to live in Gungahlin or anywhere on the way
to Gungahlin. The light rail has been an excuse to throw up a corridor of
five-storey apartments and warrens of very ugly townhouses right along the bulk
of the route. In fact on our travels
around the newer areas of the capital this visit we saw more apartments and
townhouses than there could possibly be people in Canberra. What's going on?
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| Civic bound light rail at Gungahlin |
We had taken a turn by the shambolic Museum of Australia late the previous afternoon, just to visit their gift shop which is one of the very best in Canberra. We were, however, lured into a Cook exhibition given that 2020 is the sesquicentenary of his landing in Botany Bay, charting of the east coast and the claiming of two-thirds of the continent plus Aotearoa and other associated bibs and bobs in the name of King George III who wasn't barking mad at this early stage of his reign, he just wasn't very good at his job.
At this point I must digress and say that one of the few positive outcomes of COVID-19 was the placing of the Cook Sesquicentenary squarely on the back burner. I'm not an historical revisionists but nor do I celebrate the likes of Cecil Rhodes or murderous slave traders like King Leopold II. James Cook was not a racist, he wasn't even an imperialist in the true sense, he was just a lieutenant in the Royal Navy who was carrying out orders and if all military personnel were tried for retrospective crimes against humanity across the millennia prisons and gallows would be so full you would need to repeat the entire expansionist process to establish new prison colonies in which to house them all.
Of course James, by then a captain, paid the ultimate sacrifice for any colonial indiscretions he may have inadvertently committed when, just shy of nine years later, he himself became a sandwich in the Sandwich Islands now known as Hawaii. Either way, Little Scotty from Marketing, being a thrice failed advertising man and not an actual prime minister, was determined make a show of what he and the unwashed masses believe to be the 250th anniversary of Cook's discovery of Australia which is flawed in too many ways to bother with. The plan was to erect yet another statue of him, the most expensive by far, and send the replica of the Endeavour on a commemorative voyage right around Australia which is something Cook himself never did. That was actually Matthew Flinders but Scummo has never been known for his attention to detail. Anyway, COVID-19 saved us from the worst of it all but I suspect there is a $50 million statue that will become the rallying point for protest long into the future languishing in a warehouse somewhere or other.
But back to the museum...
Endeavour Voyage rubbed me a little up the wrong way at our first viewing. It is the story of Cook's journey up the east coast of Australia from Point Hicks in present day Victoria to Possession Island in the Torres Strait. A long topographic relief of the coast flows through the length of the exhibition with insights into various Indigenous communities along the way. My problem was the quite literal words that were put into the mouths of the people of Kamay or Botany Bay by modern day people who claim to be their descendants. It's fine to speak in concepts but not to fabricate actual discourse. I am not a particular fan of oral history which can all too easily overreach and become construct history. Some of this has.
With my sciatica under relative control and me feeling a little happier with the world a second viewing seemed in order because if nothing else, I am in awe of James Cook as a navigator, a cartographer and most certainly for being much less of a bastard than many of his contemporaries on land or at sea.
Cook is not demonised in this exhibition, as is the current fashion, and I learned a great deal about the man and gained a greater insight into life along the east coast 250 years ago. The exhibition also answered a long pondered question of mine as to how he actually drew his amazingly accurate and rather beautiful maps. It was essentially an 18th century etch-a-sketch used in conjunction with state-of-the-art navigational tools.
We left satisfied and also with a bag of treasures from the gift shop.
Canberra Tucker Tip #2
My favourite Canberra restaurant used to be the Anatolia in Civic but that was more than 30 years ago. I've searched for a replacement Turkish ever since. I found an excellent one in Auburn which has since been sold on and changed and another in North London which is still open but it's an impossible hike at this particular point of time.
But there is The Original Turkish Kitchen on Captain Cook Crescent in Manuka. In my heart-of-hearts I hoped 'The Original' was a reference to the Anatolia but it's probably not. Still, it's worth a visit and being both Turkish and located on a crescent why not?! I have never eaten a more tender chicken shish kebab but stick to the mains, avoid entrees unless you're really hungry because the kebab, rice, potato salad, mixed salad and Turkish bread had me waddling like a duck.
And wait for it... this is the only restaurant in Manuka that is BYO but charges no corkage, not a cent!
The newish National Arboretum just north of Scrivener Dam is always on our agenda. Oh to be able to revisit thus place in 50 to 100 years to see what it has become! The site is the pine forest adjacent to the historic cork forest. The former quite literally bit the dust in the 2003 fires whilst the latter survived to become Stage 1 of the arboretum which is a 250 hectare site containing over 44,000 rare and endangered trees planted in large checkerboard plots of around a hectare each. It's a magical place that looks towards the future but is also a wonderful visit in the here and now.
The highlight of our four days was the discovery of the a Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Much like Lieutenant Cook and the Australian east coast we clearly weren't the first but it was a discovery for us nevertheless. We took an afternoon drive out to Casuarina Sands then followed Paddys River Road east until it becomes Tidbinbilla Road - Route 5 on a map. That's where we found the reserve which I've never been to in almost 60 years of visiting the national capital. Peter lived there for 8 years and he'd never been their either but we will be going back.
It's a large drive-around space with picnic areas and the like but the jewel in the crown is The Sanctuary which is at its heart. This is a large area set around a series of ponds that are reported to be teaming with platypuses although every ripple we spotted turned out to be a water spider. Never mind! This precious environment is surrounded by a high electrified fence to keep out the likes of the very wily-looking feral cat we spotted on our drive in.
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| The Sanctuary |
The Sanctuary is accessible by foot or wheelchair only and is worth a couple of hours of your time if only for the amazing forest scent. It smells like an expensive environmentally packaged fragrance you might find in a wilderness shop in Tasmania, the kind that's run by recovering hippies who've embraced a completely vegan Fair Trade form of low impact capitalism.
It was just on sunset as we drove out of the main part of the reserve and there were over 200 eastern grey kangaroos grazing in a huge meadow by the corner of Tidbinbilla Road. We were in awe and we will be returning just as did to Timmy's that evening and since it will probably be a year or more till we get back I have to confess to a double order of shan tung chicken, but not both at once.
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| Some locals at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve |
