Sojourn in Canberra

Our Easter in Canberra was a quiet family affair, but very welcome nonetheless. Perhaps the family description is right, but nothing involving Max is entirely quiet. He's a bundle of energy and highly articulate. Come to think of it, he wasn't the only loquacious person in attendance! I was there, not to mention a brace of cousins and their wives. David and Shlomit drove from Sydney on the Friday bringing Eric and Sue who were visiting Australia from Christchurch in Hampshire. It was a quick 24 hour visit because they had to return to Sydney at lunch-time on Saturday, but great to see Eric and Sue on their first visit to Australia. There was lots to talk about and we conducted them around Canberra which impressed our English visitors greatly. The UK has nothing similar.

On Friday, we split into two groups. Dot was feeling unwell and stayed at our motel, but I accompanied Shlomit and Sue to the National Gallery to see an excellent special exhibition: "From Turner to Monet". It included dozens of 19th century landscape paintings brought together from galleries around the world. Just down the road the rest of the blokes - including Max - headed for Questacom - the national science exhibit. Max loves going there with all the machines, experiments, and dinosaurs. On the Friday night, we had a great meal in a good restaurant and Max attended that also. In fact, he had three evening meals out over the weekend!

Talking of dinosaurs, we also took him to the National Dinosaur Museum to look piles of old bones and reconstructions. He couldn't quite grasp the reason why they were all dead and talk of the exhibits being hundreds of millions of years old brought a blank face. Again, this was a male only trip including me, Beck's partner - Rob, and his brother Andrew. Beck and Dot were out shopping downtown. The same day, Sunday morning, Max received some Easter eggs - well a large number. Apart from the larger ones, we staged a hunt for eggs deposited strategically around the house and located them all on a map. We showed Max how to interpret the map and I think he got the idea that 'x' marked the spot where eggs were hidden. In the end he found all 8. As you can imagine, they also disappeared fast.

Come to think of it, I also received an egg. That's naughty. I'm not supposed to have chocolate. In fact, (a) I didn't eat it, and (b) I don't know where it is!

AS