Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Day 136 - Canberra to Nowra - trip south part VI

The excellent National Museum of Australia covers history, anthropology, natural history and Aboriginal art.



The Old Parliament is also a cracking building



and opposite sits the self-styled "Aboriginal Embassy", originally dating from the 1960s and the fight for recognition of the treatment of indigenous people and the fact that, being disenfranchised and disowned of their traditional land, they felt like foreigners in Australia ...


Other top spot of the day was at Goulburn, which boasts a Merino wool museum housed in - what else? - a 15m sheep



with a viewing point through its eyes...



In passing, some woolly, ovine facts for you (1) in WW2, Britain pre-bought the total Australian wool "crop"; (2) no Aussie sheep shearer was allowed to enlist, such was the importance of their job; (3) sheep numbers peaked in 1970 at 180m (to put that in context, the two-legged population was shy of 13m!).

We finished the day admiring Kangaroo Valley and the Illawarra Escarpment, and gorgeous Fitzroy Falls, where the river falls 82m over Hawkesbury sandstone rocks. 



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