A national icon

Dropped into today to the Canberra tourist attraction with the most statues by a country mile, the War memorial.  Very much a quiet day there, it being winter and between commemorative events so all volunteer guides seemed under utilised.  Lots of Asian tourists - it must be strange for Japanese tourists to visit the place.  I stood behind some who were taking in a small display about the Atom bomb. They may have felt the way I did when visiting the Japanese war memorial in Tokyo, that is unable to read a thing & getting a general impression of veneration for the home side.  My 8-y-o son and I discussed whether there should be an actual atom bomb on display, but we agreed it could pose a radiation hazard.  As you gaze from the front steps down to parliament houses, old and new, it's easy to theorize that the two sets of buildings opposite each other separated by lake and 3 kms might have something to do with the obscene amount spent on defence.  Wandering between medals and machine guns, I thought nothing of what my son from the war gaming generation thinks of the edifice and trappings of the war memorial - as it happened, while we sat in the cafe he was more interested in why there were holes in the outside wall and what different sorts of birds were doing poking around in them.  Outside on our way to the new underground car park, we noticed a large number of rabbits scurrying around, having made their homes in holes under the ground cover outside one of the buildings - it seems the war on rabbits by way of the calicivirus has not been a great success, with bunnies hopping around, feet away from bronze statues of Weary Dunlop and Simpson and his donkey.