Ritva Sillanmäki Photography

It’s been over a year since we visited Australia( Feb 2025). I had all my photos edited and my husband Mara had written the narrative of our trip. Then what I call a disaster happened: my computer and Lightroom had some hiccup and all the edits were lost. I hadn’t saved them. It had been a tremendous job to get them done, and I just couldn’t get myself to redo them again. But now I thought I would do the Canberra post. It has been fun reading the text again; it brought back memories of our trip, little details I had forgotten. Let’ get started.

Going for the new world record, or at least my personal record, with time spend driving within three weeks, so off to Canberra we went on Friday morning. So little time and so much to see. The plan was to see relatives and friends and to see the sights. Driving up the Misty Mountain and Clyde Mountain was nearly as much fun as coming down.
I hadn’t done my research about Canberra properly and we had to go the Tourist Information by the Lake Burley Griffin. We got the info and bought a wombat toy for one of our grandsons. It was time to find a place to eat and it proved to be challenging as it often does. There was a lot of road work going on and GPS was not up to speed. In the end we ended up eating pizza slices at a place called BJ’s in Acton, I think. But BJ’s was clean and cheap and that is sometimes all you need. Pizza was good too and they had some fun posters on the walls and beer was great.

The higher building is High Court of Australia and the other is National Library of Australia

Anyhow, it was time to have a good general idea of the city. We drove up to Mount Ainslie Lookout. View was great and you could see the city plan well. Capital Hill, the lake, War Memorial, Anzac Parade, National Museum, etc.

From Mount Ainslie we came down to look at the Australian War Memorial. Unfortunately, Memorial was closing for the day, and we couldn’t get in. But there is always another day. But we got plenty of pictures of statues and memorial gardens.

By sheer luck I ended up witnessing a memorial service of a major. I was taking pictures, and I saw a man with an urn in his hands. I approached him to say I’m sorry I didn’t mean to take photos of such personal moment. And he approached me to say that he was sorry if he ruined my photos. He told me that they were going to scatter his father’s ashes to the memorial site. His father had passed in 2023 but only now they had found the time to do the ceremony with family and friends. He also said that I was more than welcome to take pictures. After the brief chat I saw the rest of the mourners coming closer. The major had been active in the matters of War Memorial, so his ashes were allowed to scatter in the grounds.

After the Memorial, we drove along the Anzar Parade, which is filled with statues, but we were not able to stop and take photographs. It was late afternoon and time to check in. However, our room wasn’t ready. The front desk manager was apologetic and offered us drinks at the bar and breakfast at no charge. Thirty minutes later, the room was ready. Even with the help of the internet, it was, once again, hard to find a place to eat. First, we chose a tavern, but that was a mistake. We made a U-turn in the parking lot because the tavern looked like a dive from the outside. Later, we were told that “tavern” usually means it is not a classy place. We ended up in a restaurant called Ostani in the Realm Hotel. It looked promising based on the number of people. It was packed, but we managed to get a table. After waiting for a few minutes, I asked a server, who was passing our table, if somebody would be coming to our table soon. He said that I would be better off going to the counter to order, which meant this place was a self-service establishment. We ran into this phenomenon constantly, and we found out that the restaurants are not able to get enough staff anymore, especially after Covid. In many places they have QR codes at the tables that say: check out the menu, order, and pay with an app. I went to one counter and ordered and paid for our food. Then I went to the bar and ordered and paid for our drinks. After carrying the drinks to our table, I had to go and get water from the tap into a jug and get glasses as well. The food was okay, but the atmosphere was lively and fun.

Saturday morning was spent visiting Parliament House and Old Parliament House. The new Parliament was stunning with its marble and different kind of stones and architecture in general. Also, it’s a huge building and I had to push Ritva in a wheelchair to different chambers. Some folks might remember the British comedy show Little Britain. I felt like one of the characters, Lou, pushing his friend Andy around. If you are not familiar with the character, you can find them on YouTube.

Canberra’s permanent Parliament House was formally opened on 9 May 1988 by Queen Elizabeth II, taking the place of the provisional Old Parliament House. This event represented the culmination of many decades of planning for a purpose-built seat of the Australian Parliament on Capital Hill. The date of 9 May was selected to reflect earlier key moments in Australia’s parliamentary history that occurred on the same day, underscoring continuity in the nation’s democratic tradition.

Then we went to Red Hill Lookout for another broader view of Canberra.

Afternoon was reserved for family and friends. We drove to suburb of Charnwood to visit Ritva’s cousin’s daughter Ashlee, her husband Inny and their two young children, Marley and Rex, and their two dogs and five chickens. As you can imagine, it meant a lot of running around, screaming, barking, clucking, licking, throwing balls and toys, drawing colorful pictures and even some discussions. All around chaos and fun. Little Rex cried when we left because he had so much fun playing ball. The dogs were big but friendly from the get-go. Chickens not so much, but they were colorful and beautiful.

After few hours we had to leave for our evening dinner date with Lauren, Matt, Christina, John and Daphne at Walt and Burley Restaurant in Kingston area. Lauren and Christina are Ritva’s late brother-in-law’s nieces and Matt is Lauren’s husband and John and Daphne are their kids. Matt works for the Ministry of Defense in procurement department. He showed me a picture of a huge ship he had just bought, or was it the government that bought if? We had a great time and finally some good food. I had Prawn Tacos and Ritva had 300 g Scotch Stake.

Sunday morning’s plan was to have an early start and drive back to the coast soon after. Change of plans! Heli called to say that her brother Matti and his wife Jenny had just got back into town and would love to meet us. The meeting was set up for the afternoon, and we had some time to go sightseeing. After some googling we decided on the Old Bus Depot Market to start the day. Right after entering the market, we saw a piece of Finnish history at an antiques stall: a milk jug from a famous factory called Arabia. We already had a similar jug at home, but this was a smaller one. And it was only 45 AUD (25 €), so we ended up rescuing it back to Finland. Then we had cannolis for breakfast. Yum! After the treat we checked out the rest of the stalls. One stall had beautiful paintings, but they were too big and expensive for us, but just before the exit we found indigenous paintings from Yidinji artist Greg Joseph. We really liked his style—and his prices—and ended up buying one piece with a lizard on it. He was a good salesman. He said that the lizard was a totem animal for his children’s mother’s family, and that the kids inherited the totem animal from their mother. Nice story. He said he was from the area around Cairns. We also thought that the painting was small enough to fit into our luggage, but we were mistaken. I had to take out the staples, roll up the painting and store it in a cardboard tube. And I was able to save the frame as well and put it all back together easily at home.

Then it was time for a new visit to Australian War Memorial, and we even got in this time. You could spend days there. It is huge and there are so many details in all the displays. And once again we were reminded how little we know about countries and their history, especially those that are not close to us. Having been a member of the Commonwealth, it is understandable that Australia has been involved in many wars and conflicts involving Great Britain. But that is not even close to covering all wars. There are too many to mention. Wall of Honour for those killed in action, with its poppies, was sad and truly memorable.

Not being too lucky with our restaurant choices we ended up in the same restaurant, Walt and Burley, as previous night. Beef burgers really hit the spot. Time to meet cousin Matti and Jenny. They live in the suburb of Coomes, that was not far at all. We had nice time getting to know each other and talking about family. Matti and Jenny nearly bought a holiday house in Finland because Matti loves cross country skiing. They were planning on spending half a year in each country. But then came Covid that spoiled the plan. At least for now. Matti had spent his working career in military and then in some type of special forces in police. He told some hair-raising stories about his career, but I would have to kill you if I revealed them . At one point he spent 6 months protecting someone 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, without ever being able to visit home. And had to sleep with shotgun on
his night table. The person protected was a witness in drug trafficking case. She survived and testified.

I think this is the full account of our visit. I hope you made it to the end. I apologize for the number of photographs; you can expect to see some more, as I have now edited them.

Text Mara Sillanmäki