Monday, 6 February 2012

Pt 2 - Day 24 - Royal Australian Mint - War Memorial

This morning the first thing we had to do was make Shannae's birthday cake for tomorrow.  This was today's major priority and given there was a nice big oven in the camp kitchen, it worked out well.  Our little oven only has numbers 1-6 for temperature, so it is a bit hard to know exactly what temp you are on.

After this, we went to the Royal Austalian Mint.  This was very interesting.  Cody was just in awe of all the money he laid his eyes on.  We did an informative tour and saw a lot of coins we haven't seen before.  We couldn't believe that after only 30 months in circulation the plastic notes are then shredded, what a waste!!!  We were able to look down into the room where all the coins were made and the kids all got a special 2012 coin each with a wheat sheaf on it, to commemorate the year of the farmer, so that was great.  And one of the best things about the mint........it was free!!!!!

After this we headed to the War Memorial.  We wanted to be there for the 5pm playing of the last post, so thinking we didn't want to get there too early and wait around we arrived at 4:15.  This was a big mistake as there was so much to see.  On either side of the road, leading up to it, there were large statues or monuments commerating every war.  It would have been nice to walk along here and have a look at these a bit closer.  At the memorial itself there was a room dedicated to every war Australians were ever involved in.  There were paintings, dioramas, original letters and diary records, original uniforms and models of where the battles took place.  We could have spent 3 hours there.  We were very disappointed that we didn't arrive earlier, but we didn't realise how much there was to see.  We found a "Millsteed" on the honour board, but know "Bywater's.   Listening to the bagpipes at 5pm and just being there was a very emotional experience.  We are so glad we went.


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