Politics

27 June – Friday

Another clear, sunny day following a very cold night. The sky is incredibly blue. A big of excitement to start the day when a couple in a caravan near us became a little confused as to who was doing what when they were packing up. For some reason, the jockey wheel was not on the caravan (most unusual) and before the man of the caravan had hooked up to the car, the lady of the caravan released the front jacks, with the result that the draw bar pointed quite sharply towards the ground. They both remained very calm and no words were spoken while the large jack was put in place and the caravan raised. They probably wont try it again!!!

Today was political, with a visit to Old Parliament House followed by the new Parliament House. We didn’t realise, but Parliament had their last sitting yesterday, so unfortunately we missed out on seeing our representatives at work!

We took the guided tour at Old Parliament House and were shown around by a volunteer who was probably aged about 80 and very smartly dressed in red and black, red net stockings, red shoes, black skirt, absolutely beautiful red jacket, pearls and a gorgeous black velvet beret with red roses. The guides at the Female Factory may have to rethink their dress code! We were able to enter both the Senate and House of Representatives chambers, the press gallery, cabinet and party rooms. I’m quite sure everyone who had worked there was quite happy to move to the new building. Lots of school children about, of course.

A short walk up the hill took us to the new Parliament House, with its lawn covered roof and enormous flagpole and flat. Again it was a guided tour, this time with a young man who definitely needed to do a bit more research into political history. A member of the group asked him about the Gough Whitlam dismissal and because it was before his time, he didn’t know anything about it! Because Parliament wasn’t sitting, we were able to go into both chambers. The green in the House of Representatives was paler than I expected and the Senate was much pinker.

We finished the afternoon with a drive around the embassy area and no doubt had our number plate taken when we stopped in front of the US Embassy – very impressive building and VERY impressive security.