Home » Australia New Zealand » Detailed Travelogue on Australia and New Zealand

Detailed travelogue on Australia and New Zealand

Detailed Travelogue on Australia and New Zealand

Larry
2006-05-27 03:23:16

Displayed times (last time: )

an outside deck (like the New York World Trade Center), but still, I
quite enjoyed the view from the top.
Even from the top of the Sydney Tower though, I couldn't make out where
the Olympics would be held in the year 2000. One of the staff pointed out
the general direction to me, but they'll actually be held outside the city.
Sydney lobbied hard to get the Olympics for 2000, and you can feel Olympic
fever in the air. Museums are sprucing up displays, new construction is
going on, and everything is set to be finished by 2000. The postal code for
Sydney, by the way, just happens to be 2000 ("Sydney 2000"), so the city
adopted this coincidence as their Olympic slogan.

Upon returning back down, I continued walking north, passing some of
Sydney's historic old buildings. When I passed the state Parliament House
(for New South Wales), I stopped in to see if they gave tours. They did.
During the course of my trip, I actually stopped at three different state
parliament houses: New South Wales/Sydney, Victoria/Melbourne, and South
Australia/Adelaide. The English style of government is used (Australia is
still a commonwealth of England, though one of the issues in the news while
I was there was the opposition trying to force the current Prime Minister to
keep his campaign promise and discuss the "Republican" issue -- about the
possibility of making Australia an independent Republic, free from the UK.
Most Australians I spoke to on the matter seemed to feel that Australia
would indeed become a Republic in time, though many thought it would still
be some years off).
The National government is in Canberra (a self-contained city made for
the national government, much like Washington DC). I didn't visit Canberra,
but still got a good feel for Australian politics by visiting the three
State Parliaments and hearing the ...

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120