I had heard a lot about Canberra before arriving from a variety of sources. 90% of what was said was less than totally positive. The usual comments revolved around how boring and how small a town Canberra is. So I was very pleasantly surprised when I discovered contrary to popular opinion what a lovely town (and yes, I would only call it a town) and how live-able Canberra really is.

Canberra is gorgeous. The streets are wide. There are wonderful pedestrian and bicycle paths everywhere. Lovely parks and greenery adorn every corner you turn - this is a city in a park, not parks in a city. I haven’t really seen the lake yet, but from the peek I had one evening, it’s beautiful. However, like most Australian cities, it is extensive. While I can walk to and around the city centre, I really will need a bicycle to properly explore and traverse both the city and the ANU’s campus.

The main problem I find is that Canberra suffers from the “suburban-social scene/life” syndrome. People’s lives revolves around the suburb in which they live - everyone shops, dines, has coffee, hangs-out in the suburb in which they live. Rarely do they come to the city-centre. In fact, it’s so ridiculous that the city centre is not like most city centres around the world. Here the city centre is just another suburb! It’s called “Civic”!

That said, it’s quite difficult to restrict myself to just Civic, i.e. Canberra city centre. The bigger (and in some ways cheaper) supermarkets and shops for daily life (e.g. Woolworth’s and K-Mart) are only found in the suburbs. The easiest one for me to access is the Westfield Mall in Belconnen - that’s about a 10 minute bus ride away over hill-locks and what I would consider country-roads though I’m sure most Aussies would probably think they’re a normal part of “city life”! In any case, Belconnen is far too far and difficult to cycle to.

Civic is good for outdoor cafes, David Jones (!) and the second-hand and remainder bookshops (though personally, I think the bookshops do leave much to be desired for an academic town - none of the bookshops match Blackwell’s in Oxford, UK). Although there are pretty much similar shops in Civic as in the suburbs, it is really in the suburbs that I’ll find the wider variety of products in the larger supermarkets and household stores. Canberra is weird like that.

Still, it’s a very pleasant town to live in. It’s very manageable and very easy to adapt to. I can see how life can be “boring” and “quiet” after a while, but for the moment, maybe this is just what the doctor ordered…

Posted on February 21st, 2005 by jl
Filed under: Life!