escape to Canberra

Happy New Year! Yes, I realise that I’m a few days late, but just yesterday we arrived home from a family break in Canberra. We drove down on the day after Christmas (known as Boxing Day here in Australia), much to the chagrin of my sister in law who thought that we were mad heading out of Sydney on the morning after Christmas. We left at about 9am, and the roads were SO quiet. My SIL always heads north the day after Christmas, and I think that’s the difference – everyone goes to the coast making the roads absolutely full with awful traffic, whereas no-one goes to Canberra between Christmas and New Year. Accordingly, we had a smooth, quick trip down there.

We had rented an apartment through AirBnb, which we also used on our Italy trip last year. We have found all our bookings through AirBnb to be just wonderful, and this was no different. We stayed in Kingston, which is quite close to the centre of Canberra, and it was deathly quiet. We soon decided that Canberra was empty. Practically no-one was there!

Last year, Canberra celebrated its 100th anniversary. It is Australia’s capital city, but was only “created” 100 years ago. A location was chosen for the capital, the city designed, and then just *put* there. Because of this, very few people actually grew up there, or have roots there. Its population is very transient, and most people go “home” to their families for Christmas – elsewhere! So, really, Canberra was pretty empty!

We took advantage of this to go to the Gold of the Incas exhibition at the National Gallery, and Mapping our World at the National Library. Both were wonderful for different reasons.

Among the treasures shown at the Gold of the Incas exhibition, there were quite a number of textiles. This was a complete surprise to me, but given the climatic conditions in Peru, the textiles had been amazingly well preserved, though hundreds or thousands of years old.

There were four main types of textiles shown in the exhibition: woven and embroidered textiles, printed textiles, woven lace openwork, and incredible feather textiles (they’re hard to know what to call them!).

Not surprisingly, I particularly enjoyed the woven and embroidered textiles. The ground fabric was woven, often using really highly skilled weaving techniques, from camelid fibre – alpaca wool – and then embroidered with cotton or alpaca wool. All the embroidery appeared to be done in stem stitch, both as an outline and as a filling. The threads were Z twist, rather than the S twist threads that most of us usually use. I had a discussion about this with another woman standing by the same exhibit as me. We pondered whether this was a cultural thing, or whether the people of the Paracas culture might have been predominantly left-handed and therefore more likely to twist their threads the opposite way. We don’t know the reason, but it was interesting to ponder.

The example that I have linked to above (with photo and supporting information, so do follow the link!) was quite beautiful. That it was done in the period between 100BC and 200AD means that at approximately 2000 years old, it was incredibly well preserved. There were small patches where the fabric was missing – perhaps it had fallen apart or been eaten – but the colours were vibrant and really, it looked like contemporary work. Quite amazing.

The openwork lace examples were stunning. They seemed to be a combination of netting and woven lacework techniques. They were all white, and again, in amazingly good condition.

The feather textiles were a real surprise. There were probably three different examples of this style of work in the exhibition. They had a woven fabric base. Then feathers were knotted onto string/thread, which was sewn onto the surface of the fabric, creating a feathered textile. The feathers were brightly coloured and in their natural state, from brightly coloured birds, rather than dyed. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before, so therefore very interesting.

There were also many other gold, ceramic and other artefacts in the exhibition, and overall, it was very worthwhile. However, I’m a textile person, so that’s what I’ve chosen to focus on here.

“Mapping our World” at the National Library of Australia featured another one of my loves. If I ever had to change my profession, I could very happily become a cartographer. Before I started my own business, I used to work for a publisher as a book designer, and one of the books I worked on, for about a year, was a map book. I LOVED it!

The exhibition had maps which showed how mapping has changed throughout the centuries, and then how Australia was slowly added to the world map. We had a guided tour with a wonderful volunteer guide, Colleen, and she was fascinating. You could tell she loved maps, loved history, and loved sharing these with others. The maps were beautiful, and the prized piece of the exhibition was certainly Fra Mauro’s “Map of the world” from the 1400s, on loan from Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. It truly is an amazing treasure. The story goes that a British museum wanted to borrow it for an exhibition, but were not given permission. The National Library of Australia was given permission though, and it made the perilous journey all the way from Venice to Australia. Why was Australia allowed to borrow it, but not the UK? The reason given was that anyone in Europe can pop over to Venice to see it, but making the journey from Australia is much harder. We are very fortunate to have it here!

You can see a video of the installation of the Fra Mauro map – it was a difficult process that involved removing a wall! (The video is embedded into the post on my website, however, if you’re reading the emailed version of this post, you can see the video here.

As we were in Canberra for New Year’s Eve, we decided to take the kids to see the 9pm fireworks. Fireworks in Sydney for New Year’s Eve are a Really Big Deal, involving finding a position on the Sydney Harbour foreshore (near the Harbour Bridge which usually forms the focal point) at some time, usually early, in the day, and then waiting (staking out your plot so that no-one else nicks any of your space) until 9pm, or if you’re really brave, midnight. Then you have to battle public transport to get home. For young kids, it’s just not really practical, as it ends up being an EXTREMELY late night.

Canberra, however, is a different story! We learned that the fireworks in Canberra are based in Civic, and as long as you’re anywhere near Civic, or between the bridges on Lake Burley Griffin, you’ll get a fine view. As we were staying in Kingston, right near the waterfront, we were only about 1/2 hour’s walk away. So we set off to see them at about 8:30pm, arriving at a suitable place at 8:59pm. With one minute to go until they started, we had our pick of the places to sit, and enjoyed the (admittedly, not terribly exciting, but our girls had never seen live fireworks before, only on telly, so it was exciting for them) fireworks with very few people anywhere near us. Contrasting this with the last time that we braved the Sydney fireworks (maybe 15-20 years ago), it was a very different experience!

We did a lot of nothing while we were away, just enjoying the chance to relax. I did a lot of embroidery, which while it was actually work, it is still relaxing, so doesn’t feel like work. There are lots of things to do in Canberra, especially for families, but as we go down to Canberra every year or two, when there is an interesting exhibition on, we’ve done most of those things before. We don’t feel the need to go to them all, each time we’re down there!

This year at Vetty Creations is going to be a year of book writing. I’ve deliberately planned to have very few classes, so that I can focus on getting my current book done, and hopefully get stuck into the next one as well. I hope you’ll enjoy it with me via my blog and Facebook this year, and contributing to the conversation when you’re able. Thanks for your support of Vetty Creations!