Firstly, I drove up to the Mt Ainslie lookout that has a great view over Canberra. As you can see from the photo below, the planners of Canberra worried a lot about symmetry. The picture shows the War Memorial in the foreground, with Anzac Parade heading down to the lake. On the other side of the lake is Old Parliament House, with New Parliament House behind it.
One thing that I learnt is that I need to take a small torch on expeditions like this. It's hard to set up a tripod correctly when:
- there's no moon
- it's so cold you can't feel your fingers
I then headed off to New Parliament House to take a few pictures.
I found it difficult to capture a good image of the giant flagpole. Because the forecourt is so well lit with floodlights, it tends to hide in the darkness. I probably need to come at dusk. I picked this time of night so there wouldn't be anyone else around.
I was just setting up my tripod in front of the building when a policeman hurried out. He told me that I couldn't set up my tripod in front of the building because there is an aboriginal mosaic in the paving stones and the aborigines don't like people putting tripods on it. It's ok to walk on it, spit, and probably urinate on it, but apparently not stand tripods on it. If that is the case, I reckon they should dig it up and put something else there, I mean, let's face it, its just some decoration added to the paving stones. I bet that one day some polically-correct committee will put a fence around it and declare it a sacred site.
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