10 August - NT Parliament House, RFDS and Bombing of Darwin Exhibit

10 August 2016 – 182 196

NT Parliament House, RFDS and Bombing of Darwin Exhibit

This morning we did a tour of the Northern Territory Parliament House. https://parliament.nt.gov.au/about/tours-of-parliament-house

It is a beautiful building designed to cope with cyclones and using natural light very extensively with lots of small windows and highly reflective walls and floors.  They have also used road base compressed and highly polished to be like a brown granite – it is amazing what they have achieved with this, you would never guess it was road base.  The outdoor area has the most amazing views of the harbour and is beautiful. The State Library is in Parliament House, it has a beautiful quilt made from patches signed by individuals who were in Darwin during WW2, who returned for the 50th anniversary. https://dtc.nt.gov.au/arts-and-museums/northern-territory-library/a-territory-story-exhibition/darwin-commemorative-wall-quilt

We then walked back to the car via the Wave Pool – for those living on the Sunshine Coast this looks pretty ordinary, you can’t ride the waves, just bop up and down in them – but given there is no swimmable surf beach for a very great distance I can see its appeal to locals.  After a picnic lunch, we visited the Royal Flying Doctors Tourist Centre and Bombing of Darwin Exhibit. https://www.rfdsdarwin.com.au/  This was a true multi-media experience.  As well as the Royal Flying Doctors aircraft to look through, there were various holograms with touch screens to tell you about their role in the RFDS. 

There were also two holographic movies that lasted about 20 minutes each, one on the foundation of the RFDS and one on the Bombing of Darwin from a US naval officers perspective.  There was a large open area with rails that showed a short presentation of the bombing of Darwin with an aerial map inside the rails and a land based view of the harbour on a screen.  The coolest part though was a virtual reality headset experience of the bombing of Darwin – this included sound, 360 degree vision, and the seat shaking and vibrating etc.  Very realistic!  This took Hayden several goes to manage as the reality of the visual movement tended to create motion sickness. I think after the last few days he understands that war is not glorious, that while men do very courageous things during war, the destruction, terror and loss of life that goes with it are devastating.  Another evening listening to planes take off and land as part of Exercise Pitch Black. https://news.defence.gov.au/media/media-releases/exercise-pitch-black-2016-aircraft-arrivals