Deft strokes help deliver capital design
It’s a view to take your time over. The view that inspired the creation of Australia’s capital city, writes Mike Yardley.
STANDING on the summit of Mt Ainslie, marvelling at how Canberra is cradled by wraparound bush, I was fascinated to learn that the viewpoint played a critical role in Walter Burley Griffin winning the global competition to design the federal capital in 1912.
His artistically gifted wife, Marion, was handy with the paintbrush and captured the quintessence of the Australian landscape in striking water colours, infused with sepia, gold and luminescent tones.
Her renderings spectacularly illustrated the panorama, entwined with her husband’s grand geometrical plans with radial avenues forming major axes and vistas.
He envisaged Canberra as a theatrical whole, ‘‘an irregular amphitheatre’’ as he called it, where the perimeter mountains form the top galleries, the hillside slopes and manmade lake represent the auditorium, while the Molonglo basin serves as the city’s central stage. Remarkably, the Griffins had never visited Australia. Chicago natives, they were esteemed members of Frank Lloyd Wright’s renowned Prairie School of Architecture.
Canberra’s harshest critics deride its artificiality, modernist architecture and bureaucratic heft. Yes, it’s a weddingcake city studded with monuments, acres of soulless and functional buildings to house the nation’s civil servants, and a few shameless imitations such as Geneva’s Jet d’Eau, recast as the Captain Cook Memorial Fountain.
Parliament wasn’t sitting while I was in town, so I didn’t get a chance to see the shambolic political scene in action — or who was prime minister that week.
But before hitting the official sights, I jumped in the car and had a snoop around the thick cluster of embassies, just east of Parliament. Dozens of foreign outposts stud Embassy Row like an architectural beauty contest, most sporting their nation’s trademark design elements with eager pride, although the New Zealand High Commission is a notable disgrace; a brutalist visual atrocity resembling a relic from Sovietera Romania.
Located on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, the National Museum of Australia brims with treasures, treats and trinkets. Constructed at the turn of the century, the museum freely admits it took its style and design cue from Te Papa, inspired by Wellington’s unswerving focus on storytelling, and on being engaging and accessible for the mass market — not stuffy or elitist.
A great option for newcomers is to take a guided tour, which is a onehour romp, offering an excellent introduction to the museum’s galleries and some of the unexpected finds. Star turns for me included the First Australians Gallery, the Holden prototype from 1946 and Azaria Chamberlain’s black dress.
This dress prompted speculation that Lindy always dressed her baby in black, an ‘‘unnatural’’ colour for a child. The entire Chamberlain collection, while controversial, is evocatively compelling. But I was particularly excited to clap eyes on Phar Lap’s heart, one and ahalf times heavier than the average horse’s heart. It’s enormous. Testing on the heart confirmed that he had been poisoned with arsenic, prior to his death in the United States. The heart is the most requested object visitors to the museum want to see.
Outside, don’t miss the Garden of Australian Dreams in the central courtyard, a symbolic landscape where each footstep is the equivalent of travelling 100km across the Australian heartland.
Like the national museum, the Australian War Memorial is also free to enter. It remains my runaway favourite Canberra experience. Australia’s armed forces are honoured at this shrine, which also boasts a profoundly moving museum. As the centenary of the World War 1 armistice approaches, the WW1 galleries vividly illustrate the enormity of the sacrifice.
The focus on Gallipoli, with magnificently crafted dioramas, resonates equally with Kiwis. World War 2 and all recent conflicts are duly recognised with dignity and aplomb. After paying my respects in the Hall of Memory and gazing across the Pool of Reflection to the Eternal Flame, the poignant strains of the Last Post filled the air. This moving ceremony is performed every day at 4.55pm, just before closing.
For a complete change of scenery, I checked out some of the buzzy, trending precincts that are reshaping Canberra’s reputation and surely helped elevate the capital into
Lonely Planet’s winners’ circle. The global travel brand has rated Canberra as one of the world’s top 10 cities to see in 2018.
NewActon is a revelation, a flourishing precinct stamping its own identity through sustainable design, trafficstopping outdoor art, luxury apartment living and headline dining. Underpinned by incredible architectural statements, the awardwinning Nishi building, thickly draped in vertical gardens or living walls, is a masterpiece. It’s home to the Ovolo Hotel and one of Australia’s most Instagrammed staircases and ceilings.
Showered with global design awards, the Grand Stair comprises several thousand exposed steel rods anchoring several thousand pieces of reclaimed wood. It creates the sensation of horizontal ‘‘flying’’ wood, as if an old sailing ship has blown apart around you.
Nestled on the city centre’s edge, Braddon has emerged as a hotbed for contemporary cool fashion, edgy retail and funky dining in Lonsdale St.
Got a sweet tooth? Frugii Dessert Laboratory is a lipsmacking journey into icecream alchemy and its many wondrous flavour sensations, under the command of John Marshall.
Over in Manuka, Patissez is another headturner for its caloriebusting FreakShakes, extreme dairy concoctions which are a cross between a milkshake and a chocolate sundae, wickedly dressed in delicious trimmings.