Canberra

An original copy of the Magna Carta

An Aboriginal ax head from about 20,000 years ago.

The Australian Parliament House

Two days ago, we drove from Walhalla to Canberra and stayed the night in an RV park.  This morning, we woke up and drove a few kilometers into the center of the city.  Canberra is a planned city (like Washington D.C.), which means that when it was built, people planned out the whole thing instead of slowly adding on buildings and roads to the existing city.  Canberra was designed to be fairly symmetrical and well organized, which I think it is.

First, we saw the National Museum of Australia.  In the museum, we saw artifacts from the early colonization of Australia.  Colonization of Australia started in the late 1700s by Dutch and English settlers who arrived because of the copious resources.  Also in the museum, we saw a collection of Aboriginal tools.  (The Aboriginal people came to Australia 40,000+ years ago from Malaysia and are the oldest continuous culture in the world.)  They used tools crafted from wood, stone, bone, tree resin, string (made from grass), and, more recently, metal.  For example, fishing spears usually had a wooden shaft with a stone head fastened on with string.  When European people came to Australia, the Aboriginal people were treated very poorly and were forced out of parts of their land.  In the museum, we saw a video from 2008 of the prime minister of Australia apologizing to the Aboriginal people for how the government had treated them.

After the museum, we drove to the Parliament House, and saw the meeting place for the Australian House of Representatives.  (Australian government is set up similar to the US with three branches: the legislative, judicial, and executive.  However, instead of a president, Australia has a prime minister like Great Brittain.)  Also in the Parliament House, we saw an original copy of the Magna Carta from the century.  The Magna Carta is a document written in Latin which describes the idea of democracy, where power is in the hands of the people.
Tonight we will again sleep in Canberra, and tomorrow, we are hoping to drive the rest of the way to Sydney.