Erik Skye Travel Blog

30 Dec 2011

Here’s the map: Google Maps – Wizard of Oz

Car's trip odometer: 1130 clicks (km)

Canberra (pronounced “can-bra”) is the country’s capital city, and I stopped in for a quick walk-about before continuing on to the coast. Canberra has a lot of space, an empty feel, and seems a strange place for a capital since it’s located neither on a major body of water/river or close to a major population center. Canberra basically sits off on her own in the hot Australian bush (cold in the winter I hear too). She’s pretty enough though, with lawn malls, gardens, war memorials, modern art, government buildings, central lake, and mature tree-lined streets all configured about a huge rectangle plaza similar to Washington D.C. I just didn’t want to get stuck there for the night.

I hear most Australians dread the idea of living in Canberra, including a recent prime minister who basically wouldn’t. “In 1996 the prime minister, John Howard, caused a stir after his election by declining to live in Canberra. He would, he announced, continue to reside in Sydney and commute to Canberra as duties required. As you can imagine, this caused an uproar among Canberra’s citizens, presumably because they hadn’t thought of that themselves.”^10

It always feels good to get back to the ocean, which is where I landed by end of the day. I took a run at Surf Beach and a walk through Batemans Bay where I noticed every other business was a restaurant serving fish and chips.

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Footnotes:

10. Bill Bryson, In a Sun Burned Country (Broadway Books, 2001) p. 86.