Enlightened Canberra

I decided that the organisers of this Festival had done such a good pun I wouldn't try to top them!  Instead here is an image.

The background to the tale is that those responsible for tourism in Canberra decided that there needed to be an Autumn equivalent to the hugely successful Floriade.  This event was the outcome, which  combines much of the old Canberra Festival but has as its key point the illumination of a number of the National landmark buildings.  The organisers quote a number of past hits, of which we had only seen, in the lumens, the NGA 25th birthday event.  That had been good enough to get us along to check out this one!

In essence images are displayed on the façade of the buildings.  This time they had 'lit up' four buildings.

The first we went to was Old Parliament House.  This is now the Museum of Australian Democracy but was, when we first arrived the Parliament.  The images tend to speak for themselves, but for the benefit of overseas readers, the photos in the first image are of Prime Ministers.

We particularly like the effect of a row of terrace houses in the third image.

The next stop was the National Library of Australia.

The third image here shows a technique quite popular with punters of taking someone silhouetted against the illuminated building! Concept good, subject excellent, execution leaves a bit to be desired!

After a pause (see below) we weaved our way across to the National Gallery of Australia, avoiding the area where Frankie Valli was going to perform.  As well as the actual building being illuminated with images from the current Ballets Russe exhibition the 'suspended globe' was also lit up.

The fourth building was the Parliament of Australia.  Strangely they had set this one up so that punters could walk through the light beam and cast large shadows on the façade.  An interesting effect with some symbolism available for the thinking person.

One of the other traditions of a Canberra Festival is a fireworks display.  We haven't been to one of these for yonks (in fact the last fireworks display we had attended was the Macy's event 4 July 2006 in New York).  As we were in the area we gave it a look.  It was really good, and the crowds of folk enhanced the event.

On our peregrinations we also passed by what is referred to as the Aboriginal Embassy. As well as the fire and the indigenous flags the image captures the (normally) lit up Australian War Memorial a couple of kilometres away across Lake Burley Griffin.

To  finish the story off, it should be noted that we tend not to go out at night a great deal.  This is partly because we don't see the need for this as we have things to entertain ourselves at home and partly because the amount of wildlife on the roads makes it a tad hazardous.  When we do emerge, we run a competition on how many kangaroos we see in the last 4km.  This night Frances picked 3 and I picked 4.  We saw 3 'roos, so Frances won despite my efforts to (post-hoc) change the rules to marsupials.  That meant I would have won as a wombat poddled out in front of us!  The stupid thing stopped in the middle of the road, posed with its foot in the air and then proceeded on.