The Royal Australian Mint was only one part of my day. However, I missed out on the mint when I was in Canberra in '16. Like last time, I somehow chose to visit Canberra in the searing heat of summer (or just before the start of it). After what happened last week I'm gonna do a much better job at listening to my body and looking after my health. Heat exhaustion and heatstroke are very real threats, and can affect even the healthiest of people. In Canberra I've been planning my activities accordingly and being thankful when I'm on an air-conditioned bus or in a museum, library, or other building. Tonny had to go to work this morning, and the Royal Australian Mint was on the way. Unlike in the US, where there are four different mints, all of the coinage in Australia is produced here in Canberra. A massive pile of $1 coins would greet me in the lobby but all I could do was look.
If it were possible I'd dive on in there like it was a ball pit. By my estimation, there is about $3,000 worth of $1 coins here. There have been talks for years of withdrawing the 5-cent piece from circulation but it doesn't seem like they're in any hurry to.
That bin is chock full of five-cent coins. The world needs cash, and I have a difficult time envisioning a world where there is no cash at all. Every coin or banknote tells a story, and the Australian currency most certainly tells a story of such an amazing country.
Perhaps coolest of all at the mint is the opportunity to mint your own $1 coin, although it costs $3 to do it.
I would have preferred to mint a $1 coin with the kangaroos on the reserve but I was unable to choose which one I wanted to mint. Like with the US Mint, there are many collector coins for sale but, although I used to collect proof sets I've learned to have a bit of a disdain for coins minted only for collectors. I prefer coins that are made for circulation.
Much like how I did a tour of Washington DC earlier this year, I'm doing my own grand tour of Canberra. The two cities couldn't be more different, however. Washington is in the middle of a bustling megalopolis but Canberra feels more like a large provincial town than a national capital. Kangaroos and kookaburras bound and laugh whilst diplomats and politicians whiz by in their shiny vehicles. Before doing anything else I wanted to take care of some diplomatic business. The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran appealed to me, and I wanted to see how I could visit Iran without having to do a guided tour. Online message boards state they are very helpful when it comes to getting a visa but when I approached I wasn't even allowed inside the gate. The same couldn't be said about the Royal Embassy of Bhutan, however. The ambassador was very helpful in advising a way to visit without having to pay a tourist tariff and then gave me a pin with the Australian and Bhutanese flags. Bhutan recently reduced the tourist tariff by half with the hopes of encouraging more people to visit but it's still an expensive exercise. Iran and Bhutan are far from a done deal but at least I tried.
A perfect respite from the heat would be my second visit to the Parliament House. Opened in 1988, the facade is shaped like a boomerang and hoists one of the largest flags of Australia. A number of years ago I did a jump with my scooter but this time I posed more subtly.
Unlike last time, I went onto the roof of the Parliament House. "Roof" is a relative term since the entire structure is built within the ground, as in, it's underground but within a hill. With late afternoon approaching I realized I was only six finds away from 2,500 geocache finds in Australia. My goal before the day's end was to reach that milestone, but not without filling up my water bottle. My milestone find would be at a serene place called SkySpace, Designed by James Turrell, there are more than 75 SkySpace open-air observatories around the world. 2,500 geocaches in Australia have brought me to every state and territory in the country. I've crossed Australia on the diagonal from Cape York to Augusta. I've found caches on Lord Howe Island, Thursday Island, Rottnest Island, Karijini National Park, Jervis Bay, the Whitsundays, Uluru and Kata Tjuta, the Grampians, along the Overland Track, and in so many other places. Of the roughly 550 local government areas (LGAs), I've found geocaches in more than 300 of them. I'm pumped and ready for another 2,500 finds in the Land Down Under.
Canberra joins the lengthy list of places I've been to more than once, and it's not as bad as many travellers like to put it. I'll take a visit to the Royal Australian Mint over a night of partying any day of the week.
