Sleeping with Cops “The Australian Federal Police… keeping you safe, and keeping you awake”

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Parliament House Old Parliament House Floriade Riding the Buses National Gallery National Museum Sleeping with Cops National Zoo CSIRO Black Mountain Tower National Archives High Court War Memorial The Big Dry CLICK ANY PHOTO TO SEE IT AT FULL SIZE One of Australia’s finest (and noisiest)	There are possibly thousands of apartments available for short term rental, in hundreds of apartment-hotels in Canberra. So it makes perfect sense that the one we chose to stay in was full of young, energetic, and dare we say it, noisy children, many of whom were Australian Federal Police recruits.
	We arrived at the Medina Apartments in the suburb of Kingston, feeling a little dizzy after a wild ride from the airport with the taxi driver from hell, soon fell into bed and a had a pretty good sleep. This must have been an accident because the next night our sleep was interrupted by very young children rearranging the furniture next door, or possibly building some kitchen cabinets, with screams of merriment, very late at night, about eight o’clock. Tony listened carefully through the fire door and heard the desperate tones of a distraught father pleading with his children to ‘shut the @%#$ up’. The kids eventually fell asleep, probably of sheer exhaustion, or perhaps their dad ‘done them in’.	Tony finds our apartment while Linda drags both suitcases behind
	We fell asleep then too, only to be woken up by the booming of young male stentorian voices above us until 3am. In the morning, Tony went to see the manager and told him of his many heart operations, diabetes, wonky left eye and other ailments, and asked if we could please move to another apartment before he died of shock. He was a helpful young man, and moved us to the top floor on the end of the building. He told Tony that the loud young men were a large group of Australian Federal Police recruits, staying for 20 weeks and spread all over the hotel. Lucky for us, we bumped into several of them that evening, and immediately chatted them up, congratulating them on being Australia’s finest and so on, and then sweetly mentioning that there had been a lot of noise in the night and if it happened again we would phone the police. They were alarmed at that idea, and begged us not to do so, because they had been specifically told that they weren’t allowed to get arrested. We didn’t hear another sound out of them throughout our stay. We did come across some other noisy children though, who liked to rampage all over the flower garden and ride their scooters along the walkways while shouting to each other from a great distance. We soon sorted them out though, when we happened to get into the lift with them and told them the building was full of very nasty policemen. This experience reminded us not to go on any more trips during school holidays.
	Despite the temporary noise problem, we liked our apartment a lot (very roomy, with two bedrooms in case of disputes) and the pretty garden courtyard and the very convenient location (near several bus stops) Early one morning we woke up to yet another noise – hot air balloons overhead (okay, they weren’t noisy, we just thought we’d complain a little more). One of Canberra’s tourist attractions is balloon flights over Lake Burley Griffin, and one of the balloons made a detour to have a look at us having coffee on our balcony.
	We had an exciting time when we decided to do some laundry one evening, using the very mysterious washer-and-dryer-in-one in our bathroom. After reading the instructions 47 times, Linda finally figured it out, and then it only took the machine two hours to wash a few clothes. Linda had been reading and re-reading the drying instructions in the meantime, and thought she had it down pat, but despite her best efforts she couldn’t get more than a hint of a sigh of warm air to whisper over our clothes, so they were still soaking wet the next morning. So we threw them in the oven for awhile, and that was that, except for a slight singeing of several socks.
	To visit the official Medina Apartments website, click here > http://www.medina.com.au/ To visit the official Australian Federal Police website, click here > http://www.afp.gov.au/home.html