Friday, November 19, 2010

Parliament

Last weekend, we stayed with Gill in Canberra. On Friday, Gill gave us a lift into the city on the way to her work. We headed for parliament, specifically the old Aussie parliament which is now a museum of Australian democracy and has been since the new parliament was built in 1988.

Here is a picture of Hannah in the cabinet room, pretending to be the Aussie Prime Minister:



Sadly, she wasn't permitted to pose in the Prime Minister's office:



...but she was permitted to pose on (a replica of) the speaker's chair. The Aussie speaker's chair is a replica of the original speaker's chair from the Westminster parliament in London. When this original chair was destroyed during World War 2, the British parliament made a replica of the Aussie speaker's chair. Thus, the current chair in the UK parliament is a copy of a copy of the original one. Which, in turn, was probably a copy of the one that was destroyed by fire in the 1830s. Which is nice.



We took a look into the chamber of the House of Representatives (roughly equivalent to the UK House of Commons)...



...and, after escaping from an overly enthusiastic volunteer guide, we found the Senate (an elected assembly which seems roughly equivalent to the UK House of Lords) chamber:



On the way from the old parliament building to the new one, we discovered some interesting geological rocks, as this sign shows:



Here is the old parliament building, with the interesting rocks in the foreground:



When we finally reached the new parliament building, we didn't have enough time to go in. Hannah was nevertheless very excited to be there:

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