Day 17 - To Canberra

From Sydney to Canberra by coach, stopping at a truck-stop for breakfast and then a sheep station for lunch.

Truck stop was nothing to write home about, but the sheep again was very interesting.

First of all we saw the dogs round up the sheep - pretty much by themselves. They are also trained to run across the backs of the sheep in order to control then when they are in close confines.

I got to have a go at catching a sheep and holding it in the 'shearing position'... You can just about hear Craig (the owner) say that I '... chose a big one...' and '... maybe he should have told me to pick a different one...'

We then had shearing demonstration - a top shearer can do it in about 2 minutes... the owner took over 6!

The station has Merino sheep and this one produced an AAA+ grade fleece, this quality is likely to end up in Italy to be used in high-quality suit fabric e.g. Ermenogildo Zegna. The length of the fibres, the fineness and the crimp (which is very visible here) are what define the quality.

First stop in Canberra was the war memorial up above the city. It is aligned with the main war memorial and museum, lake and finally the Parliament building.

View across Canberra. It's possible to access both the mountains (for skiing) and the sea (for sailing) in a few hours.

Next stop was the National War Memorial/museum. Outside the walls are covered with plaques bearing the names of the nearly 103,000 Australians killed in wars/conflicts. As it was Remembrance Sunday recently they were covered with poppies left by visitors.

The exhibits inside were informative, interesting and very moving. I was reduced to tears on more than one occasion by the sheer tragedy of what was being commemorated. But it also had incredible stories of heroism and the rarest tank in the world - the Mephisto, the original German armoured vehicle.

At the end of the visit there was the playing of the Last Post and a Eulogy for one of the fallen, this is done every day. Incredibly emotional and hardly a dry eye among any of those present.

I'd bought a couple of poppies, intending to attach them by the name of one of the fallen where there wasn't one already... Imagine my shock when almost immediately I found a Bolding - one of only 2 in the entire list of over 100,000.a

https://www.awm.gov.au/people/rolls/R1443738/