Categories: friends, food, concerts
Date: 22 October 2006 12:58:46
A very pleasant weekend in Canberra: it really is a lovely city.
Saturday night was an absolutely wonderful concert courtesy of the wonderful choir Semele put together: you can see the programme on her wiblog entry here. As you can see, there were a large number of pieces, a piece in fact from each of his oratorios. As someone who is only beginning to explore classical music, it opened up a large number of oratorios I had never heard of: and ones that I now want to hear all of! The choir was, once again, magnificent: as was the orchestra. A number of very loud pieces, ably played by trumpet and timpani, echoed around the church, and there were a number of wonderful chorus pieces that are sing reverberating in my head.
This morning a breakfast with Semele and boyfriend was planned at Milk and Honey, but boyfriend had to dash off, so Semele and I enjoyed a very relaxing breakfast. I went for the toasted chocolate bread with hazelnut ricotta and grilled peach -- and can recommend it. I chose it as I knew, after seeing it, I'd have to blog about having chocolate bread! Together with the ricotta and grilled peach, and two cappucinos, it was scrumptious.
Before heading home I set off to the Canberra Deep Space Centre at Tidbinbilla, which contains a very interesting visitor centre where you can learn all about space and space exploration: my last visit there must've been almost 15 years ago, on a family holiday there. It was nice to return. The complex also contains the antenna that received the first images of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. It was once at another site, Honeysuckle Creek [some great names!], and was relocated in the early 1980s.
After that, I had a look at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve [Tidbinbilla is a corruption of the Aboriginal word Jedbinbilla: which translates, where boys were made men]. There is a very interesting Time Trail where you can see the a rock shelter that is the oldest Aboriginal site known in the ACT, dating back 21,000 years ago. There are a number of signs explaining a bit about the early white settlement of the area. As I walked along the trail, it takes just under an hour-and-a-half, I saw at least 60, if not more, kangaroos, and a number of emus, along the way. They eyed cautiously this visitor, a few hopping away: others staring as I walked past.
Just before leaving for home, I visited Mt Stromlo Observatory, at least what remains of it and what has been re-built after devastating fires in 2003 that destroyed all of the telescopes there. It was odd walking into where a telescope once stood and only seeing burnt metal walls and a large empty space where a telescope once stood. But it's good to see rebuilding going well and an interesting, if small [though that's understandable!], public exhibition centre.