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Fly Ted Down Under Journeys through the land of Oz

Canberra

The original House of Representatives, now fully preserved, like the rest of the building, to appear as it did the day the government moved out in May, 1988.

AUSTRALIA | Sunday, 13 March 2011 | Views [402]

The original House of Representatives, now fully preserved, like the rest of the building, to appear as it did the day the government moved out in May, 1988.

Entrance to the Museum of Australian Democracy, a.k.a. Old Parliament House, the first in Canberra, opened in 1927 by the Duke of York (King George VI, that must have been quite a speech), when Canberra was but a field. The parliament had sat the previous 26 years in Parliament House in Melbourne, now the Victoria state parliament.

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And so it was here in fact that most of Australia's history has played out, great speeches, party leaders yelling at each other, Speakers making triumphant entrances, scandal erupting and so on. Now you can sit on the benches and literally walk in prime ministers' footsteps. It looks like an historic recreation but it is of course the real thing, where it all happened.

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