An educational tour - learn Australian history and politcs on a cold weekend in Canberra

A rainy weekend in Canberra

It was an unusually cold, wet and windy spring weekend. Poor visibility shrouded the land axis from Parliament House to Mount Ainslie.

Parliament House

Canberra is the aboriginal word for "meeting place", a compromise sought to break the stalemate over whether Sydney or Melbourne should be the capital city.

The marble depicted the early European migrants - white from Italy, pink from Portugal, black from Belgium

The Senate (pink) and House of Representatives (grey).

The priceless Magna Carta written during the 13th century in England.

War Memorial

Serious historians and weapons buffs could practically spend a whole day exploring the artefacts. What lessons can be learnt from the tour? Of war and peace, alliances, patriotism, bravery, folly, flawed strategies, loneliness, life and death.

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Moon Festival in Sydney southwest - multicultural Cabramatta

The wait was probably worthwhile, detours and negotiating through narrow lanes to get into the congested public parking areas. Cabramatta celebrated the moon festival, also known as the mid-autumn festival. The fifteenth day of the eighth month is marked by the Chinese and other Asians on the lunar calendar. The most repeated mythology was about the empress who swallowed the elixr pills and saved the people from tyrannical emperor from gaining immortality. However, the empress Chang Er drifted to the moon and remained there eternally.

Two Australian artists were putting on the finishing touches to the sand sculpture of the lanterns and mooncakes to depict the happy occasion.

Cabramatta is perpetually crowded even on a normal weekday. The strong winds did not deter local residents and visitors from all over Sydney to turn up and join in the fun and festivities.

Cake decoration courses from basic to advanced. Various styles showcased were a fusion of Vietnamese, French/European and Thai food decoration.

These are fruit and vegetable carvings of beautiful pink roses!

The longest queues could be seen at the BBQ jerky and Thai food stalls. My favourite stalls are the vegetarian noodles and cake stalls.

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Best tasting mooncakes

The autumn festival (spring in Australia) is approaching, two weeks to be exact, according to the lunar calendar - 15th day of the eighth month.

I am biased towards cakes and pastries made in Macau where the best Chinese and Portugese cake making skills fuse to superb delicacies.

The most popular are the traditional lotus seed paste filling with single yolk. This is sweet but not coy. I've recently acquired a taste for savoury and sweet mooncakes with century egg with lotus paste which are freshly made by some Hongkong confectionaries.