Travels around the world - Canberra

The journey to Canberra was not as simple as we’d hoped.  It seemed that we were unable to travel directly from Brisbane so we had to go from Brisbane to Sydney and then onto Canberra from there.  This was over 24 hours worth of travelling across some pretty boring roads so even looking out of the window could not give you any stimulation or take your mind off the journey.  Coming from the UK it is an amazing concept that you can travel for a whole day and still be in the same county.

We arrived in the centre of Canberra without actually realising that we were in the centre of Australia’s capital city.  Brisbane and Sydney (what we had seen of it so far) were lively cities with heart and personality, Canberra seemed empty.  There did not seem to be any buzz or urgency about it.  It was just static.  I think the main problem is that the city itself is quite spread out with quite a small population in comparison to it’s size.  Also it was designed to be a capital city rather than developing into one.

We found a tourist information centre and got reservations in a Youth hostel and made our way there taking advantage of the free maps and fliers that were available.

After 1 or 2 nights we decided that we needed to move, the place was pretty awful so we got a hotel room that was not too far from the show grounds where the CD fair was based.

To say there was not much going on in Canberra is like saying that The Beatles had a moderately successful career.  It was dull.  The CD fair was being run by a lady whose name I cannot recall, we were disappointed to find that Vladimir had been sent to another place.  We made the best of it but there were very few customers compared to the Brisbane show and were sent home early most days.

In the evenings we would make our way down to the bar beneath the hotel.  We had found a place that sold pints of beer so ordered 2 and sat chatting away and ordered another round, before we could have this we had to take our glasses back to the bar as we were using the only pint glasses that they had.

The Hotel restaurant had an indoor Barbeque, I had never seen this before but loved the idea.  We had to queue for our food and the steaks or Burgers were given to you raw, you then just went to the hot grill and cooked your food to your own preference. This was amazingly popular and I am surprised that there are not more places doing this.

The population of Canberra is odd, it is made up of either really young people or middle aged folk.  It seems that when people reach their 20’s they move away to one of the larger cities for a better lifestyle.  There cannot be many capital cities that has this trend as they normally attract people.  Having spent a little while here though I fully understand why people are eager to get away. I am glad I visited the place but I was also happy to leave.

In a bid to make this post a little more interesting I have asked Google for some information on Canberra.  I guess the fact that they have not been able to supply anything inspiring says it all.