My plans for world domination began at the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra.
Here was, literally, a license to print money. A fascinating realisation that money doesn’t grow on trees … but it does spring forth from a building which doesn’t require watering or favourable soil conditions. Bingo. My youthful spirit was later doused when the kindly tour guide explained to us the basic tenets of inflation.
Canberra is full of little lessons like these. A city designed specifically to be Australia’s capital and, so it follows, the keeper of our many stories. You’d be surprised the amount of history we’ve packed in since the First Fleet landed, and that’s to say nothing of the tens of thousands of years of Indigenous culture that preceded it.
And the city of Canberra is putting on one hell of a show, to shed a whole new light on the attractions that have made it famous.
So let’s play a little game. What do Claire Bowditch, the family budget and Questacon have in common? The answer of course being … ENLIGHTEN.
It’s the event that will bring Canberra alive after dark. The lights, the sounds, the images, the experiences, there’s plenty to choose from and it’s all designed to reconnect you with the keeper of our many treasures.
I think enough of us know that Canberra is home to Parliament House (that place where ordaaaah, ordaaaah! gets shouted a lot and where lots of people don’t really listen to it) but there’s a smidge more to it than that, like special underground geological tours that will be held during ENLIGHTEN.
My first visit was in Year 5 and, I’ll admit, Canberra seemed rather like the Elysium Fields after 22 hours on a bus (this was before the days of low cost carriers). We’d gone with the promise of snow with a side order of the education we’d receive at the other places.