This is the World War 1 monument. ANZAC forces fought on the Western Front but are best remembered for spending eight months being killed on Gallipoli.

Australia has a tradition of doing what Uncle Sam tells them to do, a tradition which is still going strong today. So they sent troops to Vietnam.

This is a closer-upper shot of the inside of the Vietnam monument. It's taken from a photo of Australian troops waiting to be picked up after some mission with a codename in Aborigine-talk. The right-hand wall is covered in quotes about the Australian experience in Nam, from politicians giving speeches to guys calling for artillery support.

They fought in Korea as part of the United Nations. There's a statue of an infantryman on the other side.

ANZAC troopers are called "diggers" (rather than Tommies or whatever), and I think this monument is just to comradeship and that sort of thing. It's pretty timeless, the only thing that obviously places it in a particular frame of reference is the rifles, which are the ones they were using before the ones they're using now.

The guy who commanded the Turkish troops defending the part of Gallipoli that the ANZAC folks landed on disobeyed orders by bringing most of his division down to that area, and then he swamped the ANZACs human-wave style. He went on to become the first premier of the country of Turkey's current incarnation, and this monument is a gift from Turkey I think - that's his face there. There's a quote from a speech he gave about how they shouldn't be sad that their men are lying in unmarked graves on foreign soil, because it's a friendly foreign soil now and they're happy there, and let's all be friends now. Um, it's nicer than I'm describing it.

This is a monument to the Navy. It's a bit artsy-fartsy, I prefer true-to-life statues.

This is the World War 2 wall of rememberance in the War Memorial, with the name and unit of every ANZAC person killed in that war for whatever reason. There's a bunch of 'em.

This is the view from the War Memorial building - you can see right across the lake straight up to the Parliament House. See the A-frame for the big flag?

And this is the exact opposite view, from Parliament House to the War Memorial. The building across the lawn there is the old parliament building, and although you can't make out the War Memorial in this picture you can see the orangey gravel in the middle of ANZAC Parade.

This is the Parliament House itself.

There's a big flagpole on the roof of Parliament House that you can see from far away. Apparently that flag is about the dimensions of a wafer-thin double decker bus.

The Aboriginal Tent Embassy isn't much to look at - this is the interesting bit. The hut on the right was full of posters and stuff on the walls and ceiling (but no Aboriginies).

I built this roller coaster myself! This is in Questacon and it sneakily taught me principles of energy transfer.

This lightning machine is in Questacon too but it didn't teach me anything except that lightning is cool.

Australian plants aren't very interesting-looking in general, but there's the occassional one that's cool. These are flowers, about the size of a corn-on-the-cob.

The scribbly gum tree is a type of eucalyptus that has these cool squiggles on it for a reason I don't know.

Overlooking Canberra and loads of less interesting places, it's the Telstra Tower! It's a city landmark now, sort of like what the Millennium Spike is presumably supposed to be in Dublin, except that Telstra Tower serves useful purposes (telecommunications stuff), educational purposes (telecomms museum), fun purposes (revolving restaurant) and you can go up it for the view too. Spike my ass.

Behold, Canberra from Telstra Tower, just like I said. On the right is Parliament House, the left is the city centre, I walked across that bridge there a bunch of times, you can see the Captain Cook Memorial Water Jet near it, and that dark pokey thing is the shadow of the Telstra Tower.

And after being up the tower I cycled for a long time because I got lost.

Seems silly, but I think it's a pretty cool memorial to have. It's bigger than it looks here.

That building on the other side of Lake Burley Griffin is the National Capital Exhibition or something, but I only really took the photo because the leaves look so cool.