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There are excellent parks and gardens in the city, including the National Botanic Gardens and the country’s most famous art museum, the National Gallery. Anyone planning extensive bus travel should purchase a Daytripper ticket ($3.70), which permits unlimited travel after 9 a.m.Ĭanberra’s major public buildings can be seen in one fairly long day tour, although three days in Canberra is advisable. For a flat fare of a little over a dollar, you can travel a fair distance from the city to the suburbs. Buses are often a better bet in Australia than trains!Ĭanberra has an excellent bus system (called ACTION buses). The main bus terminal is the Jolimont Tourist Centre, 65 Northbourne Ave. It often takes five hours to get from Sydney to Canberra. The Canberra Railway Station is on Wentworth Avenue, Kingston, about three miles southeast of Civic. North is the business district and the city’s center (such as it is) is called “Civic.”Ĭanberra Airport is 4 1/2 miles east of Civic. The lake divides the city into north and south. The city’s name is aboriginal dialect, “kanberra,” which means “meeting place.” It is the only major Aussie city that lies inland, and summers are hot and dry.
#The bumpy road to canbra series
The city was designed for a few hundred dollars and built on a series of circles and hexagons around a lake. He arrived in Canberra in 1913 to supervise construction but progress was so slow that in 1947, Canberra was little more than a sheep town with a population of 15,000. Trucks with sheep in the back drive through the city center.Ĭanberra was a planned city from its beginning when an international design competition for the new capital was won in 1911 by an American: Chicago-based architect Walter Burley Griffin. Tidbits of interest to graziers are regularly thrown in with the news on the radio. Sheep and horses graze on pasture by the side of Northbourne Avenue, the main thoroughfare into the business district.
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Politicians jog with “common folk” along the banks of the lake on mornings. Giant packs of yellow and white sulfur-crested cockatoos screech as they fly over residential areas with names like “Manuka” and “Yarralumla” and “Red Hill.” Birds are everywhere. “ ‘Roos” also lie in the sun on golf courses. Kangaroos sit in sunny patches on the many small hills overlooking the city. One of Canberra’s chief charms is the country-town-as-capital feel of the place. Canberra is accused of being a cold city (both literally and metaphorically), a city without culture or feeling, a “great waste of prime sheep country.”īut even the most Canberra-phobic Aussies have to admit that it is a beautiful city. The long-entrenched Sydney-Melbourne rivalry, which resulted in “neutral” Canberra being chosen capital, often colors their views. There aren’t even front yard fences-they’re prohibited by law in ultra-orderly Canberra.Īussies, though, have mixed feelings about their capital. There are no crowds, no pollution, very few pubs-and no discernible city center. The capital of Australia, 190 miles south of Sydney and 410 miles north of Melbourne, is a most unusual major Aussie city. They love to talk about Sydney with acerbic glee. ) Canberrans think of urban sprawl as the ultimate sin against nature. Nor buildings of more than 12 stories high.Ī city of some 280,000 people, 60% of whom are civil servants, Canberra does not tolerate too many traditional urban horror trappings (read: Sydney.
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It is deeply symbolic as well, for Canberra, the capital since 1927, is a clean and tidy place, a city which prides itself on abiding neither bumpy roads nor litter by the sides of those splendid roads. This transition from mangled macadam to mellifluous ride is not simply Another Road (surface) Attraction. Or-conveniently and interestingly-just before. The highway, which is often bumpy and uneven in New South Wales (Sydney is famous for its potholes), suddenly becomes smooth and new-seeming once you hit Canberra. Not from the huge “Welcome to the Australian Capital Territory” sign, but by the condition of the road itself. As you drive along the Hume Highway from Sydney to Canberra (a four- or five-hour ride, depending on the number of bottlenecks in Sydney’s outlying suburbs), you can tell the very minute you enter Canberra.