Canberra

This post is out of sequence as Canberra was our last step of the trip but I wanted to get the photos up before Rememberance Day (Veterans Day) was too distant a memory.

As usual please click on photos to enbiggen.

This suitably sombre looking building is the National War Memorial it shares pride of place with Parlament House in Canberra as well as in the hearts of all Australians

From the steps of the War Memorial looking down the Avenue of Honour, across Lake Burley Griffen to the old and new Parlament houses.

Same view taken with telephoto lens.

A closer view of old Parlament House

A closer view of new Parlament House with Prime Minister Holt in the foreground, (we had a Prime Minister Harold Holt during the 1960's, I used to claim him as an uncle back then.)
Australia's 17th Prime Minister, Harold Holt was in office from 26 January 1966 to
19 December 1967, when he was officially pronounced dead after drowning at sea.

Back to the War Memorial... The wings on either side of this photo contains plaques bearing the names of all the Australian Service Men and Women who lost their lives in the conflicts we have been involved in




Alongside each name there is a small hole where a poppy (the symbol chosen to remember our fallen with)
can be placed by their loved ones















These flowers had been put up just a few days earlier on Remembrance Day 11/11/2008

As can be seen by the number of poppies a lot of people made the visit to honour their fallen.











One of my favourite displays is this haunting painting titled Midnight at Menin Gate, I apologise for the photo, I had to take it on this angle to avoid glare from the flash.
The story below may be of interest as it tells how the painting came to be done.


One Australian greatly affected by the dead of the Menin Gate was war artist Captain Will Longstaff. Longstaff, living in England at the time, attended the unveiling of the memorial and that night he claimed he was unable to sleep. Going down to the memorial, and walking there in the dark, he had a vision of the soldiers who had marched through the Menin Gate during the war on their way to the front line. This vision he transferred to a great canvas showing ghostly soldiers rising out of the ground in front of the Menin Gate and moving off towards the Menin Road, Hooge, Zonnebeke, Broodseinde and Passaschendaele. Reputedly he painted the scene in one session when still under the psychic influence of his vision. Another story is that he was influenced by an English lady who had lost sons in the war and who told him when they walked together in the evening that she could feel ‘her dead boys all around her’.



Menin Gate at Midnight, Will Longstaff, 1927. [oil on canvas, AWM ART09807]
The painting was an instant success and even scored a private viewing at Buckingham Palace by King George V and his family. Thereafter, following showings in major British cities, it was bought by English aristocrat, Lord Woolvington, and given to the Australian government and people. Shipped to Australia it was quickly added to the growing art collection of the proposed Australian War Memorial. In Australia, too, the ghostly figures of the Menin Gate struck a chord with more than one million Australians who came to share Longstaff’s vision in capital cities when the painting went on tour in 1928–29. Accompanying the painting was a large–scale model of the Menin Gate which had been presented to Australia by the memorial’s architect, Sir Reginald Bloomfield. The Australian High Commission in London had negotiated with the Imperial War Graves Commission for the model arguing that Australians were largely unable to visit the memorial itself:


Another of my favourite stories is about this man