Canberra

We're about to head off, so just a quick list of what we saw in Canberra: the Australian War Memorial, Telstra Tower, the Questacon, the National Library, the National Gallery, Mount Ainslie.

What can I say about Canberra? Not much. Many people hate the city because it is artificial, and inland at that. Its whole layout was designed by an architect, much like Brazilia. I didn't find it so horrible. But I didn't fall in love with the city either.

The War Memorial is actually more like a museum than a memorial. It does a good job at remembering the Australian soldiers who died in various armed conflicts -- above all, World War I and II, at the side of the British. The Memorial does however not do a good job at remembering the sufferings of the civilian population at the hands of exactly these same soldiers in those wars. At this Memorial, with its audio-video-multimedia shows that are so scary that small children hold their ears and bury their heads in their parent's arms, they don't glorify the war, and they don't downplay its horrors. But they completely fail to acknowledge the fact that soldiers are professionally trained killers -- nothing more and nothing less. The horrors of war are not primarily something that soldiers suffer, as it is presented here, but something that soldiers cause.

I think whoever built and runs this Memorial might really want to listen to Donovan's song The Universal Soldier. And learn it by heart. Like I did, about 15 years ago, as a young man with my guitar. Its message is something worth remembering too.