A Report from the National Library, and Then Some

Back again, and I've got some more pictures from around town. I'll start out with this shot, taken just down the road from my apartment, which features both the leafy broad streets of Canberra and (in the background) the Testra Tower, one of the most notable features of the city. I suspect it's the tallest structure in town, and it looks over the city from a perch high on Mount Black. Because it's omnipresent, it's a great orienting device when you get lost on the twisty roads. (Telstra, incidentally, used to be the national, government-run telephone service, but was privatized during the 1990s. Australia has been on something of a privatization binge during the past decade.) Anyway, Telstra operates the tower, which you can climb up (I haven't yet). Telstra also runs nationalistic TV ads attacking their rival, Optus, for being a predatory Singaporean company. I bought my Optus sim card before I learned of their nefariousness, though my week-long ordeal getting my phone credits up and running suggests that there may be some truth to the ad.

I took the rest of these pictures on my way home from the National Library of Australia. Honestly, the Library is pretty much amazing. It has the most user-friendly (and comprehensive) electronic catalog I've ever had the pleasure of using. It has the largest collection in the Southern Hemisphere, as I learned today. It also has some amazingly gregarious patrons, including one 60ish lady who invited me to a Salvation Army party at the end of October, which you better believe I am going to attend. Even the architecture is, by Canberra standards, very stylish:

The inside is even nicer, with stained glass in the lobby and a sleek glass-enclosed cafe.

I've been spending most of my time this week at the Library digging up old government documents, obscure conference reports, and the like. The real find so far has been a 1969, state-issued book of Scripture readings for primary students (a.k.a. elementary schoolchildren) replete with chapter and verse. It's nothing out of the ordinary--nothing you wouldn't expect to see at a Sunday School, for instance--except for the government imprint. Such is my lot these days: getting excited over children's books from 40 years ago.

The other neat thing I found was a collection of New South Wales primary curriculum guides from 1925, 1952, 1959, 1970, and 1975. (There's one from 1941 that I'll need to get in Sydney when I travel there one of these weekends.) Unlike the U.S., where curriculum decisions are made at the local level, here curriculum standards are determined at the state level, so you get a uniformity that is unheard of in America. (It makes the research job much easier, too!) Anyway--though this has nothing directly to do with my research--the difference between the 1970 and the 1975 guides is pretty outstanding. It's as if the Department of Education suddenly got taken over by a hostile band of developmental psychologists. All of the curricula through 1970 were very structured, subject-focused (English, mathematics, social studies, etc.), and full of recommended readings for each grade level. In 1975, the entire syllabus is almost pure theory: filled with very broad statements about the goals of education, child psychology, and almost entirely content-free. It's an amazing, and amazingly abrupt, shift. The funniest part is that, in 1977, the New South Wales Department of Education also issued a booklet entitled Aims of Elementary Education, which, upon opening, is essentially written in the style of a children's book, with lots of pictures of smiling kids, about twenty words of text per page, and really big pages. Yet this is presumably aimed at an adult audience. It's entirely bizarre.

The walk back to my place is long: around 45 minutes. Normally I take the bus, but today was not too cold and I was feeling like the exercise. The Library is on the south side of Lake Burley Griffin, which divides the northern, commercial, center of Canberra from the southern, governmental, center. The lake was created by damming a muddy creek, so swimming is "not recommended" according to the guidebooks. When I asked roomies K. and A. about the idea, they laughed in shock and said, "Are you crazy?" Which I guess means the guidebook authors were being polite. In any event, to get home I have to cross the long bridge across the lake, which gave me the chance to take a set of shots of the lake just before sundown:

(I'm experimenting with composite, panoramic shots this week. If you like them, I'll try to do more now that I've figured out how to do them on my primitive photo software.)

In the shot, the inescapable Telstra Tower is on Mount Black to the right. Center, the arch is part of the National Museum, which is just below ANU, and which is supposed to be terrific. I'm hoping to get there this weekend. My house would be somewhere at the very far right of the picture.

On the way into town, here is a view of Canberra's central business district as you approach it from the national capitol:

I think I told someone that Canberra is kind of like if you took downtown Madison and plopped it in the middle of the suburbs, and I think this picture captures that pretty well. The downtown is decidedly low-rise. There is a big circular, essentially decorative roundabout at the end of the bridge, around which downtown Canberra wraps, which makes the city feel yet further spread out. So, downtown is what it is, which is, alas, far less exciting than government-issued Scripture readers from 1969.

Well, that's almost enough for now, but I'll leave you with this: I learned, last night, as K. threw an impromptu dinner party (A. is at a training in Kuala Lumpur for two weeks), that Canberra is apparently renowned for its pornography. According to the dinner party guests, the Australian Capital Territory's biggest export for years was pine trees. When the city was being built, they planted huge pine forests all around it to serve as a commodity. Most of those forests burned a couple of years ago (apparently, pine needles don't decompose well in Australia) during bush fire season. So now, I am told, Canberra's biggest export is now porn. I am further told that, if I go to the Fyshwick neighborhood, I can see all manner of strip clubs and brothels (prostitution is legal here, too) and "studios." I fear K. now has it in his head to take me to Fyshwick to see the sex shows. Stay tuned...