Canberra

Axis from the Australian War Memorial to Parliament House, from Mt Ainslie, Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. It is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne. A resident of Canberra is known as a "Canberran". The site of Canberra was selected for the location of the nation's capital in 1908 as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's two largest cities. It is unusual among Australian cities, being an entirely planned city outside of any state, similar to the American Federal District of Columbia.

Quotes

• A good sheep station ruined.
  • Anonymous, early 20th century, quoted in James McDonald, "A Good Sheep Station Ruined", Australian Journal of Biography and History, 2, 2019

• Canberra: There's nothing to it!
  Canberra: Why wait for death?
  Canberra: Gateway to everywhere else!
  • Bill Bryson in Down Under, 2000 ISBN 055299703X

• Any journalist worth his salt doesn't think any good story can't be improved a bit. The Canberra press gallery, where I served most of my journalistic life, could prove the case. It might well be the quietest day of a peaceful recess, not a speck of news to be had anywhere; but next day's papers have to appear and columns have to be filled. The boys pass one another in the corridor with always the same lugubrious questions and answers. "Quiet, isn't it?" "Yes, dead." Later they gather at a convivial spot and lament the lack of events and stories. They will have a drink on that to let it seep in. They'll have another few snorts and gradually the ideas will begin to germinate. Next day, when there hasn't been a single politician within a coo-ee of Canberra, devouring readers will learn that "Informed opinion in the Canberra lobbies thinks ...", or "Those in a position to express an opinion believe ..." And so it goes on.
  • Jack Fingleton, Introduction to Batting from Memory (1981)

• I have planned a city not like any other city in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any governmental authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city, a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future.
  • Walter Burley Griffin, talking of his plan for Canberra, 1912, from The New York Times, Sunday, June 2, 1912