Day 120

Day 120 Canberra

Well we got up and going and hit the road by 9:30 as we wanted to visit the Mint and they had a

Our Mint Guide

Stamping room

guided tour at 10am. Now getting in and out of Canberra is becoming second nature tto us and it really takes about 10 minutes to get into Canberra central but it takes a bit of finangling to find the right streets. Our map sort of cover 65% of Canberra, so every so often we run of the edge of the map and have to make it up as we go. I have gotten into the habit of looking places up on Google and getting directions and between my remembering and Maureen reading my directions, we get there, as in the case of the Mint. The Mint’s

Me drooling

Proof room

address is Dennison St Canberra, it has no number because when it was built, Dennison St was made just for it, hence no number, since then suburbia has grown around it.

Well we made it to the Mint and made the tour group. We had this guy who was very funny and lead us through the tour. Behind us were school groups so we had to keep ahead of them and their noise. The mint was built in 1968 as both the Perth Mint and Melbourne Mint were unable to cope

Coin hopper

Maureen and her coin

with the work load. They had also decided to go to Decimal currency and all those had to be made. They produce three types of coins, Circulated coins (those in general circulation and use), Non-Circulated coins (those not sent out but are kept for collectors or held just in case of need) and Proof Coins ( those that are made specifically for collectors with shinier metal and shinier stamps to produce perfect

Me and my Coin

Leaving the Mint

coins. But I jump ahead.

Way back when the settlement was started, they had no currency as the did not really need it. People got fed by the government and they traded or bartered for other items. Then along came some americans with a shipload or two of Rum and that became the currency. You could buy or sell things, including your wife, for rum. The currency was controlled by the army who became the known as the Rum Corp and they controlled the settlement. In 1810, Lachlan Macquarie

Lunch in the park

Canberra mdel

became governor and he did not like the situation at all. He eventually sent the Rum Corp back home to England and had his own troops brought in. he wrote home to merry old England and explained the situation and asked for some coins so we could have some real currency. England at that time had just finished the Napoleonic Wars and was broke, in fact it had to be bailed out by France a few years later! Anyway, they did not have any coins to send except for 40,000 old Spanish dollars, so they sent those out.

Runnerup design

Maureen and Cook's Geyser

Macquarie looked at them and said 40,000 was fine but he got one of his prisoners who had been sent out for forgery and had him punch out the centre of each coin and that gave him 80,000 coins. The original became the holey dollar as it had a hole and the centre was called a dump. They stamped the dumps with NSW and they had a currency.

As time went by they wanted more coins and England wanted them to get them from her and South Australia said no and made their own and then there was this big bun fight about forgery and use of images and queen portraits and eventually they let us have 2 mints, one in Melbourne and one in Perth. That was fine until the second world war

Going for a spin Lake Burley Griffen

Waiting to get into the Art GAllery

when those two mints could not keep up with the work and they decided maybe they would build their own but where and as usual they ummed and arghed until Menzies said, were are going Decimal and we are going to need a whole new set of coins, we had better pull our finger out and get this done and so it was opened in 1968.

We finished our tour and school after school were coming in so we attached ourselves to different ones whilst they were there and got the story they were told. A very interesting way to go around again. We left the building and had lunch in the nearby park and looked at the options. We decided ^nd, 3^rd and 4^th place getters and I think they made a good choice. Once again the school groups were there with guides so I hung around them to get the low down.

In the Gallery

Albert Namatijira

we would go back to the National Art Gallery and finish of the paintings. We checked the map and thought we knew where we were going and ended up at the Canberra Building Exhibition. It is right on Lake Burley Griffen and looks at the Cook Fountain, the big Geyser they have here. Well the geyser was off so we went into the building to look at the display. I took the Beast for another run and in we went. They have this great model of the town and a light show that indicates how the original plane was meant to be and how it has come to be what it is. They also show the 2

Sidney Nolan

Farewell to the GAllery

From the Exhibition hall I went for a run along the lake, the Geyser was now going, it does it’s thing from 2pm until 4 pm daily. They lake certainly does not look at all appetising and I would hate to fall in. from here it is easy to see where the Malaysian President got his inspiration from to build his own version of Canberra. Back into Trude the Beast went and off we trekked. We had worked out how to get back to the art gallery and off we set. We were successful this time and were back into the gallery by 3ish, so 2 hours to finish. Off we went. Once again they have these big ramps and the Beast just loves them, up and down and up and down. The gallery has ushers/security throughout the gallery and they are really quite helpful and ome chatty. I got up to the Colonial area were they have some real pictures of   and replaced them with all these abstract/impressionists that he likes and I can believe it.

Back at Trude

early Australia, except WA! I was talking to one of them during my journeys and he asked if I had seen them and I said yes and how nice they were in contrast to all the abstract stuff everywhere. His opinion was that the director does not like them and has loaned out heaps lately

As I went around, Maureen asked if I could sneak a picture of the Sidney Nolan stuff as she had sneaked some of Albert Namatijira – no cameras allowed see. I said yes and had just gone in to do so when in walks this school group with a guide. So I waited whilst she went through them with the kids and got the background story. Apparently Sidney Nolan was hiding from the police himself as he was in the army and in 1940 he heard his unit was going to go to New Guinea and he said bugger that and deserted! See hanging around school kids could not only get you arrested, but educated as well. After they left, I got my picture and shot off to find another school group to follow.

At 5, the security guys were shutting doors and ushering us out, so we took he subtle hint and left. Loaded up the Beast (whose tyre is still up from yesterday) and headed home. Tomorrow, no idea. Canberra is just the coolest place to see stuff. We have been to heaps of places and paid zero dollars for entries or parking.