"Alternative histories" Canberra by Diceman_

I drove into Canberra from Cocoparra National Park along the Burley-Griffin Way, this was my first encounter with concrete as a road surface which I would encounter a lot more of on the east coast. It was during rush hour on a weekday, so began the soon-to-be-common experience of being tailgated by impatient (and inconsiderate) local drivers when doing anything less than 5-10km over the speed limit. Who knows what they thought of a relatively tiny hatchback with a solo driver and South Australian number plates (if anything).
I stayed at Crestview Caravan park which contrary to their website was booked out except for a caravan, which I took. Due to the process of adjusting my body clock to earlier hours and noise from other people I was seriously down on sleep during the first day, and my planned activities such as visiting Parliament house were the sort that required a full night's rest.

I camped at Namadgi National Park the next night at Honeysuckle Creek (I later discovered that the first images from the Apollo 11 landing were relayed from the dish that used to be there), I camped the next night there after deciding to stay an extra day and drove directly to Sydney to give myself two full days to sightsee. However the weather had turned wintry and would stay that way for the next week until Brisbane (more on on other pages possibly).

I'm not sure if I really spent enough time in Canberra to form an proper opinion of it, but my first impression was that it seemed strange that they came all the way out here to build a capital city (I mean that in the state capital sense of the term). It's a nice enough location with enough rainfall and an artificially created lake. I think it's a sign of the attitude of the place that they dammed a river just for something pleasing to look at. The more time I spent there the more all the important activities that go on there sunk in, some obvious like governance and astronomy, and some not so obvious going from the number of tailored suits per capita.
It is the site of a rather large number of important buildings and facilities, like the old and new Parliaments, Australian National University (and subsidiaries), the military academy and war memorial, the seemingly useless things that embassies, plus well-funded things that any city worthy of the title should not be without like a museum, art gallery and botanical gardens (alas I did not visit the latter two).

I got the feeling the country ultimately would have been better off by flipping a coin and letting either Sydney or Melbourne become the capital. Canberra is born of Sydney-Melbourne rivalry which makes me wonder why they got to decide who should be the capital or alternatives. I had the idea that makes more and more sense at time goes by, that Adelaide would have been a great site for the country's capital. It's fairly centrally located on the continent, has a CBD which to this day is still mostly "unused", has extra-wide streets (Grote and King William) which is where the city centre was intended to grow up around. This would reflect what New Zealand did with Wellington, which was largely created by the same people behind Adelaide (eg. Wakefield). But again due to interstate rivalry I imagine that Melbourne and Sydneysiders would rather not have a capital at all rather than locate it in Adelaide. I feel that Adelaide would have been transformed into what it was meant to be with all that influx of funds and construction, looking at it today especially after seeing other cities it seems to have failed to reach a critical mass where things start to happen.

The layout of Canberra is different to what I expected, it is effectively a conglomerate of seperate self-contained towns rather than continuous urban sprawl broken up with Canberra's noted parks. For example Queanbeyan is (a lot) closer than the "outer suburbs" which are a suprisingly long way away.

I wasn't sure if I liked the philosophy behind Canberra's road system at first, which relies on sweeping high-speed multi-lane roads and roundabouts rather than traffic lights. The roundabout system does seem to break down somewhat in high volume traffic but after visiting Sydney I will never have a bad thing to say about Canberra's road system again. Despite the question mark over whether a roundabout or traffic light lets more rush-hour traffic through, it definitely is superior in lighter traffic and less traffic lights equal happier motorists in my opinion. As does having the privilege of travelling most of the time at speeds above 60 km/h.
However, the caveat is that due to Canberra's fast expansion and priority federal funding there are a lot of roadworks (as of Feb 2009 anyway) which can cancel a lot of these benefits.

I think Canberra would be a good place to base yourself as there are a lot of national parks nearby and Sydney is only several hours away (although the highway is crowded and full of aggressive drivers doing 10-30km/h over the speed limit). It is awash in tax dollars, has fast roads, is on the long end of the "brain drain" stick, doesn't have housing trust areas or derelict residential/industrial areas, and has very well maintained parks that if you're lucky can get to yourself.