Weekend in Canberra

I woke up this morning to the smell of food wafting up to my bedroom from the kitchen...I love coming back to Canberra. Am up here this weekend for a birthday surprise. The wife of one of my oldest friends decided to throw a surprise party for him last night at a local pub. At 7pm, we all waited eagerly for an unsuspecting Dan as he walked through the front door of the pub. When he did, we all yelled out 'surprise' in unison. Dan smiled, gave a big wave and then headed straight to the bar. The rest of the night was spent eating and drinking and catching up. It was quite a nice crowd at the party. Dan's parents were there, along with his sister and husband. There was me and a couple of other mates from school. And then there were the folks from Dan's work...a lovely bunch of guys that get to design and play computer games for a living.


Earlier in the day, I had gone out for lunch with my folks after picking up one of my sisters from her work. We headed off to my favourite roast duck restaurant in town and ordered chicken. After dropping sis back at work, we decided to go the National Gallery to walk off the lunch. We headed up to the New Pacific Gallery to check out the display of Oceanic art. It was a nice display with some fantastic pieces. One of my favourites is a huge carved house post by the Iatmul people from the middle Sepik. The post would've originally been set into the ground on top of a human skull. It had a strong spiritual presence, as did most of the pieces in the collection. One of the most prized items there is a carving called the Ambum stone which dates back to 1500BCE from the Western Highlands of New Guinea. It was excavated in the 1960s, and bought by the gallery in the 1970s. Sometime afterwards, whilst in the gallery's possession, the stone was dropped and smashed into three pieces (I wondered what happened to the person who dropped it). It was subsequently patched up and is back on display. The conservators did a fine job...apart from a few surface marks, you cant even see the joins where it had been re-glued.