
Day 3 of my trip up to Sydney. This time I went inland, and quickly up the hills, through a couple of green pastures… cows galore!
Australia has always such a dry, arid image in my mind, I am surprised to find these lush, green spots.
There were a couple of stops with walks through Rain forests, so this climate has to be wet!
Uphill it went and into a mountain range, with a couple of sharp twists and turns…. till I was rewarded with a nice view.
On the other side of the mountains, the scenery changes. There, indeed, it was rather dry, agricultural land still, but somewhat yellow and sunburnt, as I made my way towards Canberra.
Sheep, this time. Seems they can deal with the dry stuff.
I arrived in the capital in good time, it was easy to navigate. After all, not such a big city with some 300.000 citizens, who mostly seem to work for the Australian government.
It’s a planned city, on an artificial lake, but they did not chose a grid pattern, rather big axes and circles.
There are some older buildings, maybe from the 1930s, but then a lot of modern buildings, the way governments like to build offices all around the world.
I just had time enough for a visit of the National Gallery of Australia, with an amazing exhibition on James Turrell.
I had never heard of him, but his art and light installations were mesmerizing, to walk into, or just to be looked at, they played with light and space, and forms and colors….
Sometimes I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at, as if your mind played tricks on you, and more than once I nearly walked into a solid wall, not realizing it was there at all.
Unfortunately I spent so much time in there that, in the end, I had to rush through the Australian art, before they closed at a rather timely 5 o’clock.
After that: drinks and dinner with Cate! I had met her in Bangkok, a friend of my former colleague Daria.
She recently relocated to Canberra after three years in Bangkok in the Australian embassy, and now works in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dealing mostly with crisis developments around the world, and, currently, with two Australian citizens in death row in Indonesia.
We had wine on the lake and then an ample pizza dinner with wine from Cate’s home region. It is great to meet people that I met on this trip somewhere around the globe again.
The world is a global village, indeed…