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Canberra: sure it’s boring, but it’s also beautiful
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Funny thing about Canberrans — bag Canberra, and they react with outrage. Criticise Sydney, and Sydneysiders couldn’t care less. Have a go at Melbourne, Melburnians will barely glance up from their coffees. But Canberrans have a real inferiority complex. So Paul Keating’s reference to Canberra as one big mistake produced anguished cries in the national capital yesterday. Handily, Keating himself best explained the need for Canberra. As he was actually in Melbourne, he declared that the capital could have been there, doubtless out of deference to his hosts. But soon the visionary Sydney architect in him took over, and he opined that in fact it should have been in Sydney, on Garden Island (good luck getting a parking spot). If a former Prime Minister can’t work out where to stick the capital in 2009, imagining our NSW and Victorian ancestors — mired in trade disputes as well as bitter colonial rivalry — could ever have managed it is a bit rich. One of the unappreciated benefits of Canberra is that it has always served as an epithet for people outside it. Every sin of government can be blamed on “Canberra”. This artificial town, peopled by soulless bureaucrats (invariably “faceless”, “pencil-pushing” and “shiny-arsed”) and useless politicians can be the national scapegoat for every parochial whinge, complaint about officialdom and rant about parasitic pollies. Australian politics would, I suggest, have taken a different course if people railed at Sydney or Melbourne rather than Canberra. Not that I particularly mind outsiders bagging Canberra (I’m a transplanted Sydneysider). The fewer people who know what a fine place it is to live the better, for mine. It is an actual, real-life town these days, unlike the company town that it was up until the 1980s. And the ACT pays it way, giving more in taxes than it receives in revenue from the rest of the federation. And yes, it’s boring if you’re under 30, and it has no beaches and the coffee’s poor, but it has the mountains and it’s beautiful and the epitome of the great place to bring up kids. What was more surprising was Malcolm Fraser’s comments about Parliament House, which he appears to now regard as a billion-dollar folly blotting his Prime Ministerial record. Keating disagreed, correctly. APH is one of Australia’s great buildings, but its majesty is subtle compared, say, to a show-off like the Sydney Opera House. Under tabloid media pressure during the early ‘80s recession, Fraser agreed to some design changes to reduce costs. The one with the greatest visual impact was the removal of the planned trees that would have covered the outside of the building, rather than the sweeping lawns down which generations of kids have now rolled. The smoother, more minimalist result is arguably a significant improvement. As for whether politicians are cut off from voters in here, well, the days of the public roaming the corridors of power are unlikely to ever return. In any event, if politicians become perceived as disconnected, voters have a way of dealing with that. Both Fraser and Keating can attest to that. |
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43 Comments
As a Canberran, I can only agree with Bernard that the coffee here is poor. It is a never ending search to find a coffee house that serves a consistently good cup. It’s about time Canberra did something about it!
I am puzzled by Canberra bashing, because it always seems to be someone who doesn’t live here saying how much they don’t want to live here. To which I can only say…well thats good then, everyone happy all round. You can live somewhere else, and I can live here, which I like. Personally, I don’t see why Sydney folk feel proximity to the Opera House is worth losing 2hours a day in commuting, but its not like I go out of my way to point bash their dysfunctional cesspit of failed urban deregulation gone horribly, horribly wrong. Why, because I don’t live there and you couldn’t pay me enough to do so.
State parliament in Sydney is as central as you could wish but that doesn’t mean that people flock to see it. I went to have a look a few weeks ago and, no doubt wisely, the parliamentary attendants treated me like a freak, possibly deranged. I had to wait 20 minutes until someone could be bothered to unlock the door to the gallery. I was the only visitor and the attendant was obliged to wait nearby - and he was making it clear that I was wasting his time. What kind of tosser believes parliament is real and worth looking at I could hear him thinking very loudly.
The parliament itself was near-deserted and as dreary as you could wish. For the life of me I can’t recall what the National Party member for Dunromin was whingeing about. I doubt he could recall too because he wasn’t listening either.
After twenty minutes, and having given up all hope of seeing Nathan Rees slam his pecker on the table, I skulked out feeling as furtive and ridiculous as a porn shop patron leaving with a big plain box under his arm.
Thankfully, the Domain was nearby and as I collapsed on the grass I thanked the Lord that he had spared me one more time.
Late last summer we sat in the Boathouse restaurant, eating food as good as any in the other places, looking at the spectacular view down the lake towards the Brindabellas, and agreed that Canberra bashing was a wonderful thing, because it persuaded the rest of Oz to stay away.
Hooray for Canberra! Since leaving Sydney I’ve never looked back. But there’s no reason for anyone else to move here. Everything you like in Sydney is better.
Bernard you say the ‘coffee is poor’. Compared to where? Melbourne or Sydney? Perhaps, but I bet you find bad coffee there, as well as in Canberra. Probably less likely to find bad coffee in Melbourne, come to think of it.
Ex-Sydneysider here as well, came down in 1983. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me back to the Emerald City.
A few random thoughts:
If Canberra is a mistake, where should the capital be? I’ve yet to hear a coherent alternative other than wankers saying of course it should be Sydney. (And the idea of another 300,000 people in Sydney with the current state of its infrastructure is frightening! )
Making one of the state capitals the national capital wouldn’t make the city any more representative - London and Paris aren’t exactly representative of their respective countries.
Canberra is indeed an insular city-state, but insular city-states are where the majority of Australians live. That’s largely what our country is: a collection of isolated cities.
In one respect Canberra is *more* representative than the other capitals - it is the only one away from the coast and in the middle of the Australian heartland.
Australians from all over send representatives of their local areas to Canberra. If you don’t like the decision-making, don’t blame the city of Canberra, look at how you voted.
For its small size Canberra has a remarkable cultural and intellectual life. A couple of months ago on three consecutive nights I went to: a baroque music concert, a presentation on Mars exploration and a Louis Bunuel film in a retrospective. Yeah, there’s nothing to do here
Stuck in the middle of NSW, Canberra sticks out like a sore thumb. Go over the border to Victoria, however, and you see something much more like it. In its faith in planning, group identity, lack of Sydney-style flash it’s like a bit of Victoria or South Australia dumped on NSW.
As well as being the national capital, Canberra is the unofficial capital of south-eastern NSW, being a regional service centre a la Dubbo, Bathurst, Wagga etc. I work casual in a toy and hobby shop, and we get customers from as far away as Tumut, Bega, Crookwell etc etc because we have the largest range in the area.
And yes the place (and its setting) is beautiful…
I first lived in Canberra in the early 1980s as a RAAF officer. In those days it was a company town and your neighbour would ask you what your level was in the public service before they decided to speak to you! It was and is a great place for families with young kids. Not so good for older teens and 20s. Drugs have always been a big problem in Canberra for teenagers as many of their parents were regular receational drug users. When my oldest son was in Year 12, one of his classmates murdered his drug dealer! As to the location, would have been better down on the coast - if it was I would still be there probably. But I now live in beautiful Toowoomba which at 700m above sea level is a bit like Canberra weather wise and you can get good coffee here!.
If only Canberra had been sited at Bateman’s Bay or Jervis Bay then I would have stayed. But beauty is one thing, the climate is a completely different one. Too hot in summer, too cold in winter and seasonal changeovers that are far too short.
Stopped there with my wife (a yank) in the late 90s. It was the first visit for either of us. Good restaurants, a beautiful setting, wonderful gallery, some great places to visit nearby (astronomical, geographical, and botanical). We both looked at one another and wondered why more Aussies didn’t know about this little gem.
Grew up there, always liked the rivers as well as any beach, and the coffee’s lousy but since the Wig & Pen opened the beer is second to none. But I couldn’t stay. A society that finds the sight of small business so distasteful, the people making a living by small business so disreputable, that it forces them to hide away like toilets. You might run out of fuel before you get someone to answer the question:
- Where’s the, er …
- Oh, you mean the place where you fill up your, er ….
- Yes, that place
- Oh well you go around that thingy that looks like a roundabout (but — ha! it isn’t a roundabout, that’s just a practical joke we play on stateside visitors), and then you sort of …
- Never mind. Where’s the train station from here?
Not such a problem if the business you’re looking for is KFC, though (or p-rnography, which at one stage was a selling point in ACT tourism ads). And you always wondered why, after some time in Canberra, your local member develops a glassiness in the eyes when you try to discuss competition laws or BAS. A few hundred loops around the roundabout that isn’t a roundabout until you end up parked out front of Parliament House, the Protective Services eyeing you beadily with something on their minds that you don’t want to know, and now you know.
But one thing I never figured out. How could the choice of Sydney or Melbourne been so hard? Did not even one of those cheapskate MPs at the start of it all have so much as a single coin to toss?
Malcolm Street: “In one respect Canberra is *more* representative than the other capitals - it is the only one away from the coast and in the middle of the Australian heartland.”
I am a bit confused. This seems to be saying Canberra is more representative than other Australian cities because it is completely unlike the cities where the vast majority of Australians live.
If almost everyone lives on the coast, how can an inland city be more representative?
I love Canberra, mind.
I’ve found the coffee here to be as good, if not better than most of Sydney. There’s lots of rubbish cafes in Sydney.
I’ve often thought Eden would have been a good site for the capital. Twofold bay is a superb harbour, and there’s big tuna around there. ROughly half way between Sydney and Melbourne too.
And second the mention of the WIg and Pen. Best beer in Australia.
It does get quite boring not being stuck in traffic jams morning and night. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to do with the extra 1-2 hours of life each day.
Part of the ‘boring’ epithet attached to Canberra derives from people finding its not like a city of 1 million plus people. It isn’t like a city of 1 million plus people because its a city of 350 000 people, but a smaller city has many advantages and for a place its size Canberra has a suprisingly large amount going on.
And having had breakfast at a cafe this morning which I won’t name at the risk of contravening some Crikey law about advertising, but which is located in Mort St, I can say the coffee as good as I have found in deep inner city Melbourne.
I live in Sydney, always have, and love it. I like Canberra and I’d move there for the right job - the bad thing about it (apart from the weather) is that it is so Bland. Last night I went to the night noodle markets in Hyde Park and had a thai pancake with spicy pork balls. When has such an event ever occurred in Canberra? Never. I used to live in Greenacre, which is not one of the more salubrious parts of Sydney, but for $12 I could get the best Lebanese mixed plate outside of Lebanon. No pretentiousness, just great food, unfussy friendly service and cheap. Where is the multiculturalism in Canberra? Everything is so Westfield, so white bread, so grey suit and bureaucrat spectacles, and altogether boring, boring, boring!
No really, guys, it’s boring.
Possibly things have changed in Canberra, but I remember about thirty years ago my partner and I went to Canberra for four days.
The hotels/motels were of a standard I would expect to find in Geelong. If Chinese/Vietnamese/Lao/Cambodian/Thai food was available, I couldn’t find it, and as my mum used to say “If Venise can’t find it, the food is inedible.”
However, the thing that really, really got to me was that all the streets had been made not to be walked in: side street cafés and nichè boutiques, markets??? NABT
For the first time in my life, as the plane’s landing flaps came down, I wanted to love Melbourne. And when we disembarked I actually knelt on the bitumen and kissed it.
I’ve always said the lack of alfresco dining options would be the city’s downfall, and now see where it has led us? I’d trade all the asian restraunts of Wooley St for a single pork ball to be lobbed at me in a darkened park! Let me out!
I was once offered a job in Canberra but, having spent a winter week there when I was the coldest I’ve ever been at night, I found it easy to decline the offer.
Nice place to visit, but if you need a log fire then it’s not where I want to live.
Australia should have made its capital Albury-Wodonga. With the additional funding from government services Aldonga would have developed into a major city balancing Sydney and Melbourne, yet still have a seperate economy to leaven the government services. An incidental benefit would have been the establishment of a federal territory to escape the enervating State division at the border.
Oh Gavin, that wouldn’t do, it would have failed to set the pattern for creating a whole new committee or piece of legislation to solve each new current-affairs crisis instead of reallocating resources to existing instruments.
Then you would all just be complaining about how boring the federal territory of Albonga is, which would be a loss given the general view that Albury and Wodonga are vibrant centres of excitement. If I ever have to park a truck somewhere for the night, that would definitely be my number one choice over Tarcutta. Personally, I would have liked Dalgety for proximity to the snow but you can’t have everything.
James McDonald: Multiply those committees by 100,000 and you’d still be short of the mark.
The only reason all governments want more and more people to come to Oz is the hope that all of their kids will be incipient-can it be congenital?- civil servants.
There’s a perfectly good location where you wouldn’t even need to build a new Parliament House, it’s all ready to go and just needs swapping around. More modest and tasteful in keeping with Keating’s comment that the current one is too grandiose. See youtube.com/watch?v=GUYGkVtqY-0
“Have a go at Melbourne, Melburnians will barely glance up from their coffees”
Which Melbourne is that then? Living there for 7 years I accidentally let slip a flippant remark about the place that was taken as derogatory and a chase through alleyways ensued. I had to cross borders twice before I felt safe. It was good to hear positive comments above on Canberra but it is still a public service town that sucks in our tax payer dollars to feather very comfortable nests - no wonder those that live there like it.
Mr Pastry: Bollocks! All the Melburnians I know, including me, take turns to be first in line to take pot shots at the place.
If you really want to risk your life get onto a peak hour train and shout-loudly-that the Melbourne train system is the best in the world. Ha!
Here’s the link for my proposed new national capital (if the moderator is around): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUYGkVtqY-0
Make sure you have your computer’s sound turned on.
Canberra would then become a great place.
James McDonald: I’m in a hurry. Funnily enough I’ve seen worse, a lot worse. Take down the fence and it would make the perfect spot to replace Canberra.
Totally without soul, but isn’t that what’s wrong with Canberra?
Ah James Mac, your (albeit rightist) common sense and decency all becomes clear, You grew up in Canberra.
All the rest yeah yeah Canberra stinks so stay away. Thirty years ago Venise? Jesus Mario’s in Brunswick st hadn’t even opened then, of course things have changed. Oh well I guess its not Sydney or Melbourne but then it doesn’t have to be. And not everyone lives a short spit from Gertrude street. There’s whole and worthwhile lives that go on in other parts of Australia.
“It has the mountains..” yes it certainly does. Early season training up Stromlo, climb Black mountain in under 12 minutes, drop down Mt Ainslie without using your brakes. There are few better ways to live than a bike and the Can’s mountains.
Bullmore’s Ghost - indeed, cold as charity, frozen water bottles, ice in your beard brrr. but all part of the fun when you think about it.
Oh and it also has the most decent premier in Australia.
Bernard’s opening sentence appears to be bourne out by most of the comments here. As a Sydneysider I love Canberra and enjoy visiting whenever I can.
I don’t think you can walk over Parliament House anymore (let alone roll down its grassy slopes), due to heightened security measures, which is a big shame. It also severely limited my Dad’s chances of being the first person to ski over Parliament House.
Canberra’s pretty new, for a city. It takes a while for a place to build up ‘character’. Every time I go back it seems to have more and more.
Acannon In 1996 on the eve of the federal election me and my mate rode our pushies over the top of Parliament house. The security guard half way up the hill smiled at us and gave us a wave. We used to ride around Parliament drive unmolleste and for fun down through the carpark of the ministerial entrance.
The design of Parliament house is full of symbolism. I wonder who the last time the doors of the building were opened to allow the Prime Minister to sit at his desk and and be reminded of the direct cost of war. Parliament House is buried so that people can walk over the Parliament to remind us all that parliament and government is subordinate to the people not the other way around.
None of that’s possible anymore. Howard put an end to all that and well before September 11.
The freedom of movement around our national parliament is one of the symbols of loss wrought by howard that I feel very keenly. I would rejoice at the sight of your dad skiing down the hill.
erratum:
unmollested
I wonder when was
To everyone who is raving about the joys of Canberra:-Lest you forget. Canberra is inhabited by takers, while the rest of Oz works for a living you, the uncivil servants,
produce nothing. The rest of Oz pays for you to live in your golden ghetto. Also the country pays for all the Parliamentarians squatting in their splendid parliament house.
We, the poor sods who pay the madder elements of the Opposition-the name Wilson Tuckey comes to mind. As does the name of Steve Fielding. All you lot have to do is shuffle papers. Everyone else is forced to work to support all of you. And the pollies of the Opposition do bugger all.
The representatives of the press are exempted from my comments. they really do work. Pity about the paper-shufflers.
I strongresent this statement Venise! And somewhat resemble.
You make it sound as though it’s all beer and skittles here. It takes dedication to work 38 hours a week doing such utterly tedious work as this. Someone has to do it though, and I demand respect!
EVAN BEAVER: You already have my total respect. Ummm, how do I re-give it to you?
Is it really exactly 38 hours? It must be tedious work if you have to time it so exactly.
With even more respect
I’m parallel to the ground B4 U.
Cheers
Venise
Ah Venise you’ve tumbled headlong into the classic Canberra-hater trap. Canberra = the Federal Government. You’ve turned a thread with some light-hearted inter-city ribbing into a slag at people.
So public servants are lazy parasites? That’s a narrow nasty view. I suppose that it’s better to be a banker or miner, you know, one of those jobs where people really care about other people and whether or not the country is well run and how best to get people the services they need.
And what about all the people in Canberra who aren’t public servants?
But tell me this, if no one collected tax and ensured it was distributed with some degree of control and responsibility who’d build your road, hospital, library (substitute favourite piece of public infrastructure). Maybe you’d like a world organised like LA in ‘Snow Crash’.
I won’t argue the point, that view is anti-intellectual claptrap and beneath your usual standard.
SBH: Oh for heaven’s sake, where is your sense of humour? Why is it that the professional bleeding hearts are so devoid of irony and fun?
Did you read Evan Beaver’s comment back to my “inter-city ribbing into a slag at people? He, as usual was smart enough to know I was doing a bit of stirring, and responded accordingly, as did I, to him. Read the two comments SBH, do they look remotely as if we are having an argument?
Had you read my whole comment, instead of flying off the handle after the first paragraph you would have read where I excluded members of the press, specifically, from my comment.
Of course there are dozens of other occupations, whose owners employ a lot of people. Worthy people all. But I have neither the time, nor the space to include them all.
As I have said frequently, to you. You have to be a member of the ‘home-birthing mob; their self-righteousness is apppalling-and devoid of any sense of lightness.
I’m damned if I will allow the likes of you to stuff up my day.
If I was having as big a chip on my shoulder as you have, I would march into the nearest public library and do some research into humour. I daresay you hate Ben Pobjie’s delicious and fun driven irony.
Please SBH, go and bleed somewhere else, there’s a good girl.
Well gee Venise your humorous tone just didn’t translate to black and white but thanks for backing it up with an ad hominen worthy of JamesK
Ask and ye shall receive.
Oh Venise, what a shame the editor didn’t allow my previous post. How you would have laughed at my humorous characterisation