CANBERRA CALLING
Joanna Wane spends a long weekend in Australia’s happiest city
How to spend a long weekend in Australia’s happiest city
“Great day for a sno cone!” It’s an unlikely claim on this drizzly spring morning at the Old Bus Depot Markets in Canberra, but that kind of optimism is contagious, so I head on over for a chat. With his curly white hair and pointy beard, Dave Mitchell looks almost Elizabethan. During the week, he works full-time as a public servant; the Government is still the biggest employer in Australia’s capital city. On weekends, he tours the markets testing out his retirement plan, selling flavoured shave ice with a smile from his orange-topped caravan.
Mitchell admits he was tempted to stay in bed today, but there was a beautiful sunrise at his home in Gungahlin, a half-hour drive north. Now, it’s nearly midday and if I’d bought a sno cone
(which I didn’t), I would have been his second customer that morning. “If I sell one before 10,” he says, cheerfully, “I know it’s going to be a good day.”
There’s an air of eccentricity to the people in Canberra, who go about their business without giving much of a stuff about what the rest of Australia thinks — which is largely how the rest of Australia feels about them. Recently ranked as the least-known capital city in the developed world, Canberra is often overlooked and decidedly underrated. On my flight back home to Auckland, I ask the Canberran sitting next to me why Aussies give it such a bad rap. “It’s tradition,” he says, with a shrug. After a fabulous four days there, I can honestly say they don’t know what they’re missing.
Locals blame its reputation on the way “Canberra” is used in news reports as shorthand for the much-maligned Federal Government on Capital Hill, where the 81m flagpole on the top of Parliament House can be seen right across the city. Say what you like about politicians, though, the founding of the young capital in 1913 continues to attract people who believe in the power of policy to bring about positive change.
As the only city in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra has pioneered some of the country’s most progressive social legislation, from abolishing plastic bags and achieving a 100 per cent renewable energy supply to legalising party-pill testing and same-sex civil unions. In August, a university study named it as Australia’s happiest city, thanks to its low unemployment rate, high wages, youthful population and access to a wealth of green space.
Each suburb has its own distinct personality, from the heritage homes, diplomatic embassies and boutique shops in Kingston to the stunning modern architecture of New Acton and the retail mecca of Majura, out by the airport, with its huge Ikea and Costco stores. But it’s not called the “bush capital” for nothing. Kangaroos frequent the slopes of Mt Ainslie, where one of the most popular trails winds up from the Australian War Memorial (book a free ticket for the daily Last Post Ceremony at 4.45pm), and “DO NOT approach the snake” signs are on display at the botanic gardens. Head into the hinterland and more than 40 cellar-door wineries, producing some of Australia’s best rieslings, are right on the doorstep.
For a first-time visitor, Canberra’s wide, treelined boulevards and planned layout make it a dream to navigate. The population is barely half a million; no traffic jams here. I stayed in Braddon, a hip neighbourhood on the southern edge of Haig Park and just a 10-minute walk from the central city. Once a grungy strip of car yards, it’s overflowing with cool cafes and cocktail bars, and street art in the alleyways. Wellington has suffragist Kate Sheppard on its pedestrian lights around Parliament; Napier has the silhouette of an Art-Deco woman walking a dog. Braddon installed a glowing “rainbow
roundabout” on the main road and a nearby pedestrian crossing shows a same-sex couple holding hands, a love heart flashing between them.
Across the other side of Lake Burley Griffin is the National Triangle, where the suits live — home to most of the cultural and political institutions that are typically seen as Canberra’s main attractions. I’d imagined something like London’s Trafalgar Square, encircled by historic buildings, but it’s more of a miniature suburb spread across expansive parklands (an e-bike or e-scooter would be a great way to get around).
I could easily have spent an entire day at the National Gallery of Australia, which has more than 155,000 works of art from Pollock to Picasso, including a collection of costumes from Ballet Russes. Beautiful and eerily moving is the Aboriginal Memorial, an installation of 200 dupun (hollow log coffins) from Central Arnhem Land, representing a “forest of lost souls” from two centuries of colonisation but it’s a celebration of cultural survival, too.
Across from the National Library and Questacon, an interactive science and technology centre, is Old Parliament House. Reopened to the public as the Museum of Australian Democracy in 2009, this beautifully preserved heritage building is a fascinating place to visit for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of political life. In the Prime
Minister’s Office, the original desk still sits where premiers Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke once held court (Hawke was colour-blind and the staff would help choose his ties).
Locating the capital in Canberra — the middle of nowhere, as it was seen at the time, despite being settled by the Ngunnawal people for up to 21,000 years — was a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne. Sydney got the better end of the deal, an easy road trip away 280km to the north. To the south, the skifelds in Kosciuszko National Park are even closer.
It’s the cusp of summer but white fluff from flowering poplar trees is covering the ground like a layer of snow outside the National Museum of Australia on Acton Peninsula, back on the other side of the lake. It’s worth booking a tour to fully appreciate both the scale of the collection and the symbolism of the post-modern architecture (chief architect Howard Raggatt describes the design as a series of puzzle pieces joined together, with buildings flung towards the water’s edge).
“You people in New Zealand have been giving me a lot of problems, asking ‘Where is our horse’s heart?’” says my guide Laster Khumalo, who was a teacher and natural history curatorial assistant in his homeland of Zimbabwe. We round a corner and there it is, Phar Lap’s heart, pickled in a bottle and weighing 6.3kg. Of all the Kiwi treasures in Australia, surely it’s about time we
repatriated that one.