Well this past long weekend saw me arrive
in the nation’s capital (Canberra for those of you feverishly googling
Australia’s capital city) just in time for its 100th birthday. Australia was having a celebration to commemorate
the anniversary of Canberra being named the capital of Australia,
unfortunately, after spending the weekend there; no one else seems to have
shown up.
Now for those of you unfamiliar with their
Australian history here is an (very) abridged version. When Australia became a country in 1901 the
capital was temporarily located in Melbourne, much to the disgust of New South
Wales and its primary city Sydney. Both
cities wanted to be the capital, and probably more importantly, did not want
the other to be named capital. So in a
crafty political move the parliament decided to build a new capital city in
bush-land between the two major cities.
They commissioned a design from American (possibly Canadian?) Walter
Burley Griffin who designed the blueprint for the new capital.
16 years later in 1927 the first Parliament
in the bush capital opened. Today Prime
Ministers still don’t want to live there, John Howard relocated and moved to
Sydney while Prime Minister (imagine Barrack Obama choosing to live in New
York), they are yet to build an international airport capable of handling heavy
flights and the city becomes a ghost town every weekend as parliamentarians and
their staff escape back to wherever every Friday morning.
All that being said, I did once call
Canberra home for nine very enjoyable months.
It is also home to the Australian Institute of Sport (the model that
Canada’s Own the Podium used before the Vancouver Olympics), the top Rugby
Union side in the country, a Rugby League side as well as some truly
world-class museums. It is also the only
city in the country where Kangaroos wander the street and you can enjoy
beautiful bush walks between suburbs.
