Canberra

I absolutely love Canberra. I had only been in Australia for three weeks when I came here, and had spent all of them in Sydney, so Canberra was a nice change of pace. The first thing I noticed was how quiet and peaceful it was. And how green! For a city, there are certainly a lot of trees! I like to do a lot of walking when I am visiting places, and Canberra is great for this because all the sights are withing walking distance. ************************************************************ Things to do: - The Film and Sound Archive: located on the university campus. This is pretty much what you would expect from the name. In ...  Read the complete review

I like to go all out when I travel, and since I’ve made it all the way to Australia (and, incredibly, managed to get someone else to pay for it all under the pretence that it’s a business trip) I’m keen to take advantage of my temporary location and see it all, or as much as my time frame will allow. This weekend, therefore, I decided to pop off to Canberra, Australia’s capital, to see what all the fuss was about. I’ve visited many capital cities, from Vienna and Rome to London and Washington DC. Hands down, Canberra is the least capital-like Capital city I have ever seen. Canberra is in its own little world, the Australian Capital Territory, much like ...  Read the complete review

Canberra is like nowhere else I have ever been. It feels like something Disney would have created; one of his perfect towns. However, Canberra is far from perfection. The first thing that you notice is just how wide the roads are, and that there are roundabouts, rare things in Australia! It is veyr green, and there are also no people, anywhere. You are probably thinking that this all sounds very nice to far, and aesthetically it is. You get an overwhelming feeling of superficiality, and if I was a conspiracy theorist, I would be convinced that I was being watched everywhere I went. There are a few things of interest in Canberra: The war memorial, both ...  Read the complete review

Ignore what people - both fellow travellers and Australians - say, Canberra is worth stopping off at. It might not be beautiful and it might lack the cosmopolitanism of Sydney and Melbourne but it has at least four things well worth doing - 1) The War Museum - a superb monument to the efforts of the ANZACs. There is more than enough to keep anyone busy for a long afternoon and the tours are particularly good. 2) The Parliament - make sure you also look out for the Aboriginal Embassy, a tent situated - much to the irritation of the politicians - outside on the lawns. The Parliament itself is surprisingly accessible. 3) The Institute of Sport - ...  Read the complete review

I was told that anyone who spent more than a week in the diplomatic meeting place would find themselves attending the House of Representative for entertainment. There was a lack of evening traffic heading into Canberra from the Hume Highway turn-off. Lorries pounded across from Sydney to Perth, but the branch to Canberra bore little fruit for the hitch-hiker. A taxi stopped and offered to take me in to the capital for ten dollars. "It'd normally cost ya eighty, but I'm coming back from Sydney airport so I'll take you in for ten bucks, no worries." It was getting dark, I was in the middle of nowhere, so I didn't even ...  Read the complete review