Canberra Enlighten

Every year Canberra has its Enlighten festival, where they light the buildings up all pretty. It also has the Noodle Market, which completely failed to impress me last year, although apparently they've made it better this time round - not as crowded. I'm afraid I wasn't game to try it again, but I did take the boys in after dark to wander around the buildings. It doesn't sound very exciting, but it was actually quite breathtaking. This is the front facade of Parliament House - an indigenous artwork.



It changed every now and again. These words are the names of all the electorates in Australia. Quite terrifyingly, I could name most of the current members of Parliament for each electorate. Such useless knowledge.



Old Parliament House was also lit up with various art works. This was very cheerful.



This was not cheerful at all - an artwork of photos of interned "enemy aliens" in Australia in WWI. Not exactly a finest hour, and the effect of the faces enlarged and lit on the face of the building was quite eerie.

Perhaps the cleverest was the National Library, got up like a Chinese pagoda. The detail on the illumination was amazing, and it was so carefully done to line up the different pillars and windows to transform a square block concrete building into a Chinese temple. And the panels between the pillars were all beautiful Chinese artworks. It was fabulous.