War memorial and the Blue Mountains

On our last day in Sydney we visited the ANZAC War Memorial in Hyde Park. I'm glad we did. The building itself was beautiful. Built in the 1930's and constructed in an Art Deco style, it commemorates the Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) joint forces that fought in the First World War, starting with the 1915 Gallipoli quagmire. The exterior stone statues and bronze reliefs were superb depictions of the Great War, and the interior was dominated on the lower level by a sculpture. It showed a dead warrior carried on a shield by his mother, sister and wife. It is based on the legend of Spartan warriors from Ancient Greece who were raised to come home from war either with their shield or on it. Clearly the experience for many families during the First World War was one of sacrifice and loss. I found it very moving.

The memorial was re-dedicated in the 1980's to veterans of all wars, and inside we saw displays from the Boer War to Australia's latest involvement in Afghanistan. Of particular interest to me was information on Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war and the recent Iraq war. I wasn't aware that Australians fought in both these wars and I was intrigued to find out why Australia followed the U.S. into these conflicts (Canada did not fight in either). I did some investigation, and I understand Australians felt and perhaps still feel particularly vulnerable to aggression, given its geographic location far from other Western powers. For example, one of the memorial displays described Japanese bombings of Darwin Australia during the Second World War. Its foreign policy strategy appears to align very closely with the U.S. to help mitigate for this vulnerability.

Yesterday we rented a car and travelled to the Blue Mountains, a couple of hours west of Sydney in the interior. It was strange at first to drive on the left side of the road, but I think I got the hang of it. I still have trouble remembering that the change signal is on the right though. Driving around today we admired the landscape, with sheep and cattle grazing on gently rolling grassy fields, and individual trees scattered around. In the distance were the forested mountains, which did look blue. But I think all hills look blue from a distance, since the atmosphere tends to absorb or scatter red light over long distances, leaving only blue light. This is the same reason the sky is blue.

We stayed in Leura, a small but picturesque town in the mountains, at a bed and breakfast run by the owner Isabella. She was such a wonderful host, and we felt like guests in her home. She has a great kitchen which she offers to guests, so I made the most of it and cooked a roast beef dinner last night with all the fixings, and invited Isabella to join us. She did, and we heard many of her stories.

She immigrated to Australia from France 30 years ago after she married her Australian boyfriend, and has been living here ever since. She's since divorced and has one daughter, who now lives in Sydney. We enjoyed listening to her stories of visitors to her bed and breakfast over the last few years. She's a self-professed hugger, and told a story of one Japanese university student on school break who started to cry after she hugged him goodbye. He told her he grew up mainly in boarding schools and had never been hugged before. What a strange and sad story. One last story - her ex-husband lives in Vietnam now, as he always had a fascination and longing for that country. I asked why and she said that he couldn't serve in the Vietnam war since he had heart problems. In fact he was one of the first Australians to receive a heart transplant. However he felt a connection to Vietnam, since many of his friends served during the Vietnam war. Isabelle was very kind to us, offered us breakfast, and filled the kids up with ice cream and hot chocolate. I'm sorry we have to go so soon. It's nice to be in someone's home for a change.

Here's Catheleen watching out for kangaroos and wombats in the Blue Mountains.