Canberra – Day 3 – Australia Day

Awoke to the early morning training of the AIS sculling teams being berated by their coaches via a megaphone. Its lovely seeing so much activity on a waterway that doesn’t seem to have much on it. It certainly doesn’t have boardwalks or cafes located on the water edge that we are used to in Mandurah and other waterside locations around Australia, but it is very beautiful.

Today we had to get water and empty the toilet. We found both located at the showgrounds on the outskirts of town. Also there was Cancon 2009 showing at the halls. Cancon appeared to be a boys own game playing day. This is a realm of society that I’ve never seen or even knew existed before. There were hundreds of nerds houses under one roof who’ve travelled I guess from around Australia to come and play games against each other in the national titles. Steve informs me that he and his elder brother Frank used to play for sometime 8 hours straight games such WarHammer 40000.

in view is approx one third of all game playing taking place at the event

The game takes place on a large table. There are hills trees and sometimes buildings that are placed on boards and then there are tanks, combatants and other items all with certain fire power and dice are rolled to perform functions such as firing, killing opponents, and tape measures are used to remanoeuvre tanks and personnel to certain positions. It has a language entirely its own. I understood nothing.

We then walked to the other end of the hall to the games for sale section. Here you can buy your tanks, glue and paints to construct your own set of warmongering equipment. It appears not uncommon to have a couple of thousand dollars or more of equipment per player for this (or similar) game. We saw one set of hand painted metal soldiers for some of the more traditional games, and they were $1900 for a small A4 sized tray of soldiers. Amazing stuff!

We then moved on to see the Australian National Museum. There were some really interesting exhibits, but both of us were really frustrated by the fact that it wasn’t following any plan or time frame and it was really hard for us to enjoy. The building was great. Quite new. It also had a memorial on the foreshore for that poor girl who died in 1997 when the old hospital on the site was blown up. She was over on the other side of the lake – several kms away, and was hit with some imploded rubble that killed her.

We walked around to the next point to enjoy a dinner at the one café on the foreshore followed by the fabulous fireworks for Canberra’s Australia Day celebrations. Leo Sayer was our host, who as you may know, became an Australian Citizen here in Canberra today. It was a great if not short fireworks.