Monday 30 October 2017

War Memorial, Canberra

In Canberra yesterday we shared a table with two strangers, and got chatting as you do. It turns out that both have lived in Canberra for decades, and agreed with us that it is a fantastic city. And then added "except that there are too many public servants".

We shared with them some of the amazing  places we had visited in the past few days, including the War Memorial. To our astonishment they said they'd never been there!

Australian War Memorial, Canberra
Eternal flame
At the memorial we looked at a lot of the amazing displays, found the names of relatives on the wall because they died in service, looked at the special exhibitions and looked at a sound and light show. Had lunch in the Landing Place Cafe.

I was moved by a simple item in the display about Australian prisoners of war in Europe in WW2. It is a page of mounted pressed flowers that Private AJ Stone picked while marching as a prisoner of war in Greece and Austria.

Pressed flowers.
Caption for the pressed flowers

1 comment:

Jofeath said...

People who live in a place tend to take for granted the dights that tourists come to see, but to have never visited the War Memorial is amazing. You would think they would have taken guests there at least! It's not somewhere that glorifies war as some people may think. Glad you enjoyed Canberra. I grew up there but was keen to get away, unlike many old school friends who have lived there their whole lives. Some of them were even born there. A couple of days while visiting my mother-in-law is enough for me!