Can-do-berra

Greetings from Canberra. How are things with everyone, hope you are all fit and well.

So what is Canberra like then? Well, as it is the capital city of a major country of the world you might think it was a bustling vibrant metropolis full of exciting goings on and such things. If you thought that, you, my friend, were sorely mistaken.

Canberra is...what is the word...'boring' is slightly harsh, I think lacklustre fits the bill. Canberra is lacklustre. For a capital city, it is such a quiet place, with no real centre to speak of, few shops and few attractions in the city centre.

Having said that its not all bad. The main reason I have spent the past week or so in Canberra is that I needed a few visas for the various other countries that I will be visiting later on, and like, every nation in the world just about has an embassy here. This was pretty cool as alot of them are in the styles of their various countries. Like the China embassy is in the style of a Chinese Pagoda and loads of other countries maintain this trend too which was cool to see.

In Canberra there are also the Houses of Parliament so I had a mosey around there which was OK, the building was pretty modern in design so that was good with all stylish and marble interior. Unfortunately, they were not sitting when I was there as it would have been kind of interesting to see the cogs of democracy turning in the flesh.

After that I had a look around the National Gallery of Australia which was massive, but had too much modern art for my liking (although there were some good photography exhibits). One particular piece of modern art caught my eye in particular, the work of one Jackson Pollock. Now whether the surname of this particular man is rhyming slang for a description of his 'work' is open to debate, certainly I think it could be.

Take a look at this picture below:



You might be mistaken for thinking that the above painting was done by my seven year old niece Chloe, perhaps something she made during an art lesson at school. But no, this is not the work of Chloe. Perhaps it is the work of my other, five year old niece, Abbie who maybe thought it fun to throw paint upon the walls of my brother and sister-in-law's house. But no, this is not the work of Abbie.

The above painting is that of famous artist Jackson Pollock, who created this when he was 40 years of age! Unbelievable! It is not the greatest travesty that this man made it famous for this sort of thing and no doubt got tremendous amounts of money for doing so. What is more alarming is the fact that in 1973 the National Gallery of Australia saw fit to spend $2m Australian Dollars (over 800,000 Sterling for the folks back home) to acquire this painting!

That said, thats pretty much all to report. One thing I will remember Canberra in particular for was that I watched my first live Newcastle United game in months here on TV as we beat Bolton 2-1 at St James' Park on Sunday gone.

So my over all feeling of Canberra is that (as the post title has revealed) it can do better.