Sunburnt Suburbia: National War Memorial

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Family Portraits

At our 20th Anniversary Ball we engaged Kellie from Romantic Events to capture some posed family portraits. She photographed most of them in a small pavilion at the venue, and some of us on a chaise longues, to get a period feel. Also to capture the style of the period we posed for some photos with relaxed, serious expressions - not all though, as it seems unnatural for photographs now.

Vacation in Melbourne

Last February Susan and I took a holiday in Hobart as the two of us alone. With the advice of our counsellor, we decided that this is a pattern that we should continue. So now we plan a holiday together at least once a year. This year we decided to visit Melbourne, our home city, as tourists. We also wanted to try out apartment living in the CBD so Susan organised a nice apartment at the Mantra on the Park. We spent 2 days doing tourist activities in Melbourne, just the sort of activities that we would normally do when visiting a city. Melbourne came up well in comparison to our other city experiences - it is a good place to visit.

Xmas & Summer 2007

Xmas started with the Foster family dinner at our house on the 22nd - a break from tradition. However the rest of our holiday followed the same pattern as the previous two years. A few days at Rye with the Miller family, followed by 6-days camping at Cumberland River on the Great Ocean Road with the Williams family. We had a good break, but no trip to Queensland this year.

Xmas & Summer 2008

We had the Miller family to Xmas at our house this year, and the following day Susan's family came. After a weekend at Rye, we took off on a 2-week road trip to Adelaide. This was our first visits to South Australia, and it was a good one. Though on occasions the weather was hot, we mostly had extremely pleasant time.

Today we visited the National War Memorial, and ended up staying for over 5 hours there was so much to do. First we found the entry on the Roll of Honour for Susan's mother's cousin, a Lancaster pilot who died in World War 2. He was R. F. (Raymond Frank) Cripps, and went missing in action over the coast of Holland on a sea mining mission.

After placing a poppy in the wall by his name, we went inside to watch the presentations on Lancaster bombing raids during WW2. By a restored Lancaster airplane there was an excellent video display about night-time bombing, and later there was a short live performance. A woman radio operator gave a monologue about the personal impact on aircrew and base personnel from the bombing raids. These two performances added significantly to the perspectives presented, and made for a much richer experience at the museum.

I then focussed on the World War 2 and onwards galleries, and this took the rest of the day. There were more excellent audio and visual displays, including a video of a helicopter and infantry operation in Vietnam. This was next to a life-size diorama of a helicopter landing.

To finish our visit we went to the Hall of Memory.

And appreciate the view down ANZAC Avenue. This scale of vista can only happen with a big vision in city planning. Is it worth it? I think yes!

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