Fireworks aka Skyfire 2011

This weekend was pretty low-key for Si and I, for me mainly because I was pretty exhausted from the week. I meant to go out on Friday and ended up sleeping instead. Saturday, however, there were fireworks to celebrate the end of Enlighten Canberra, the event that had been happening the last two weekends. So a group of us got together and went to watch the fireworks down by the lake, with a bunch more people from Canberra and surrounding suburbs. I thought it looked like English Bay during the Celebration of Lights, but Simon told me that gets up to 100,000 people and they were anticipating 10,000 in Canberra. Oops! I blame the fact that it was dark :-)

Anyway, because its Autumn and the sun is setting early (booo!!!), they started at 8:30pm. It was pretty windy when we got to the lake, and all of the smoke etc from the fireworks came in our direction which was unpleasant, but bearable. I ended up doing what I *always* make fun of my mom for doing, which is going nuts taking pictures of the fireworks. But, I'd like to think I was doing it for the purposes of journalism, so you can all see the fireworks we saw. (Yes, I can hear the cynics saying 'fireworks are fireworks, so what?', because that's how I sorta feel!) Anyway, here are some shots of them.

With the police boat in the foreground and the light on the right hand side in the background is a monument that apparently plays music, but doesn't do much else.

The right hand side is where Parliament is located.

Some black swans (there are quite a few here), that I'm guessing weren't too pleased about the people, smoke, or loud noises.

A blurry view of the National Library (same one from last post), all lit up.

Again, police boat in the foreground. Unlike in Vancouver they were the only boat in the water. I'm not even sure if motorized boats are allowed on the lake.

Don't worry, the police boat isn't on fire, it's just the fireworks.

And there you have it. Kind of a cheesy post but my next planned post was going to be about the National Gallery, only when I got there I realized I wasn't allowed to take pictures so that idea went out the window. You get fireworks instead :-)

The Gallery was great, I went on Sunday with a few of the lovely ladies from my program. The place is HUGE, and it definitely would take a few more visits to see everything. Next time I go I'm going to wear running shoes and bring snacks. Seriously, you could spend days there. We didn't go through the featured exhibit about Russian Ballet, but we saw some of the pop art and surrealist and minimalist art, as well as a lot of art from Australia's history, like colonial art etc which I thought was a pretty cool way of learning about the history of the country.

We also went through a Sidney Nolan exhibit (famous Aussie artist, see the collection we saw here), and though my feet were hurting like crazy (decided to wear fancy shoes, big mistake), we made it to the Aboriginal/Torres Straight Islander exhibit, which I need to spend more time in when I return. The piece that stuck out to me, called Austracism that I really want a copy of, is here. It really hit home because I found it so similar to some of the attitudes I've encountered about First Nations people in Canada. I also have a fundamental problem with sentences that start "I'm not racist, but...", because clearly, anything that follow is going to be fueled by racism or ignorance. So yes, I spent a long time looking at this one and hope to get a copy before I head home. I didn't realize til I read the explanation that it was also a take on the word ostracism. SO clever!

It was a great time, and I need to go back. One of the girls I went with wants to go speak with the people who maintain the Aboriginal tent village outside of old Parliament, which I would love to do too. Apparently its been there since the 1970s. So yes, though it may not happen soon, when I have some time I will head back to that area and do some more exploring!

For now, back to writing an essay :-)

Til soon!!