Thursday 3 July 2014

2014 LAGUNA PUBLIC NATIONAL CAPITAL TOUR - PART 2

As we settled in for Monday night the three of us in the Attending Dads Room A1 (of course) briefly debated how many alarms we should set and at what time we should set them so as to be up early enough to head off any child shenanigans. Entirely unnecessary as it turned out, due to our proximity to the kitchen that kicked off the morning at 0530 with an enthusiastic game of pot and pan soccer. Happily, the sleep we did get was fairly good. Even more happily it appeared that all of the children that had gone to bed the night before were still present and functioning come the morning.

Woo for us.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs (the remains of which I suspect might have formed part of the 'fritata' we had for Wednesday breakfast) and as many coffees as I could jam pods into the machine in the time available. Then into the bus.

ATTRACTION No.4 - The National Film and Sound Archive.
What an excellent institution. The kids loved it of course on account of it involving a screen and moving pictures, but in addition to that, the presenter was engaging and friendly (even when his computer started to screw him over) and the selection of material shown to us was interesting and varied. We even got to see a scene from Skippy.......Jesus that show was terrible.

ATTRACTION No.5 - The National Capital Exhibition.
Did you know that Dalgety was on the ballot as a possible Capital that the people of Australia actually voted on. Neither did I. The purpose of this building on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin is to educate on all things Capitol City related. And it does a good job of it. Not sure how many school groups they pump through it in the average day but I suspect it is a lot judging by the well practiced efficiency with which we were moved from section to section. Wouldn't let us play with the Lego they had lying around though (I mean the kids....they wouldn't let the KIDS play with the Lego) but I did locate the building I lived in when I was a citizen of Canberra in 1987 on a giant model of the city. Which was AWESOME.

It was planned that lunch would be spent in a park with footballs and running about and stuff but as we completely lacked Gortex in sufficent quantities to combat the driving rain and near sub zero temperatures, we set up camp in the Hall of Ainslie Public School (said Hall being bigger and better equipped than our entire school). Thank you Ainslie Public School.

ATTRACTION No.6 - The War Memorial.
Yay. Supervising a group of small girls around the War Memorial. A total waste of my talents. Look at the big Lancaster with all the turrents and history and God no there aren't any horses here. Highlight for my group was an 'experience' that involved standing in a room while the floor vibrated and moved up and down a bit. Never mind that the whole thing was supposed to give an insight into the horrors of night bombing over Nazi Germany (at one point a video screen on the floor showed bomb doors opening so you could see the burning city below). The girls did it twice before I dragged them away.

After a couple of hours including quite a long time in the gift shop (it's all about the gift shop people) we were extracted with aplomb by Ray the Coach driver and returned to the barracks for coffee, dinner.....and more coffee. Some kids even had showers. Not many. But some. Then it was off to what I'm fairly sure many of the kids would rate as the highlight of the trip....

ATTRACTION No.7 - Lazer Tag (Die Parents! DIE!)
I knew we were in trouble when the Lazer Tag attendent asked how many of us had done this before and all (as in ALL) of the kids put their hands up. I still think I acquitted myself well....once I remembered which button was the trigger. I certainly didn't run head first into a wall like one of the parents. If nothing else we'll be in good shape come the day we have to seal up the valley and defend ourselves from the outside world (my plans for this eventuality are available for your persual) because the kids are a bunch of ruthless killers (though lacking in the area of small unit co-operative tactics).

Back in the bus. Chocolate, coffee and parental discussion while we waited for all signs of life to disappear from the kiddy rooms. Sleepy bye byes.

0500 - Round 2 of the Pots and Pan Soccer World Cup.....

Next: Bugs. Turtles. Hanging and Dropping. Frozen!

2 comments:

  1. Interesting comments about G For George. I didn't realise the AWM had become PC by showing the bombing from the German perspective..... I've just read a few books recently about the period of concentration bombing (thank you "Bomber" Harris) and interestingly the horrendous losses by civilians and aircrew didn't really achieve much - morale was solid on both sides (places such as Dresden, Berlin, London, Coventry and Hamburg) and the impact on industry relatively insignificant (the germans for example moved much of their fighter production to rural underground, separate locations and continued pretty unabated....

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  2. Not really from the German perspective. The POV was from in the Bomber (including flak and tension and night fighters etc). My comments are probably informed by recently reading Antony Beevor's book (The Second World War) that talked quiet a lot about the effects of the bombing campaign.....oh and I just read Slaughterhouse 5.

    I'm not sure the bombing had no effect during the war. Just not sure how you measure that when you don't have a war of that scale that had no bombing to compare it with.

    I'm pretty sure it had a definite effect on us not having another one of that scale (that and the nukes of course). If nothing else - it made the civilian population pay for the actions of it's leadership (whether that was fair or not).

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