Here’s a shot of the foyer of our hotel, the Crowne Plaza:
It’s a very nice hotel, with massive rooms and comfortable beds! It’s also very close to the CBD, which seems to be one massive shopping center. It was into this tangle I ventured in the early hours searching for breakfast. I found this:
Yes readers, that’s a fresh from the oven cheese & bacon roll. I would eat 3 of these today alone.
The CBD shopping area is home to a great amount of wonderful graffiti murals and stencils. Here are some examples:
Our first destination today was the National Gallery, and the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit which is on display right now.
Look at AW boulevarding in that photo! The exhibit was impressive, but I have to say I was particular taken by a few other exhibits in the museum. One was this painting by Melville, entitled The Squatters Hut:
It’s quite large in person, and brighter than the above image suggests. I was especially charmed by the cockatoo! This was one of many wonderful Colonial Australian paintings on exhibit, and the beauty of the collection almost excused the travesty that is the failure to display Norman Lindsay.
This was my lunch:
After I ate the horribly dry thing shown above we headed to our next destination, the War Memorial.
This is a remarkable museum that honors all Australians ever killed in war. It is a deeply moving place with more to see that can be seen in any one visit, and a wall of remembrance upon which the names of all fallen Australian soldiers are listed:
That’s just a small portion of the wall, showing some of the tens of thousands of Australians list in the Great War. The red things are artificial poppies placed there by visitors.
Of all the countless exhibits in the museum the one I find most moving is this photo:
Australian soldiers took some kangaroos with them to Egypt at the start of the First World War to remind them of home. Ours was a small country then, but we fought alongside England and many, many Australians were killed. The kangaroos survived, and in 1915 were donated to Cairo zoo.
Today is New Year’s Eve, and around 9 we headed to the official celebration in the CBD. Here’s Adam displaying the typical crowd response to the entertainment, which was Johnny “I was famous 20 years ago” Diesel:
Mercifully his set was brief, and at 9 pm we were treated to a spectacular firework display:
Tomorrow is a new year. Happy New Year to everyone reading this, and best wishes for the year ahead 🙂
