canberra bashing

Every so often, a journalist will decide to write a "ho, ho, isn't Canberra a funny place with all those roundabouts" article. Bronwyn Hurrell is the latest to take the easy way out and poke fun at Canberra.

In Sydney there are landmarks galore, such as bridges, tall buildings and harbours, by which to orientate oneself.

In Adelaide, if you go too far one way you reach the sea and the hills prevent you from careering off towards Melbourne.

Of course, there is no beach in Canberra – just trees. It's very hard to see Forrest – one of the inner suburbs – or anywhere else for that matter, for the trees.

True enough about the trees. I once read that where Washington DC was a city with a large number of parks, Canberra is a park in which someone has lost a city. The distances between buildings in the Parliamentary Triangle is truly breath-taking.

There aren't really that many roundabouts in Canberra. The oft-cited "roundabouts" in the Parliamentary Triangle are really just circular roads. Being able to navigate on them takes a bit of practice. Some of the inner-South suburbs (Forrest being one) have their own profusion of circular roads which must have looked great on Griffin's drafting paper but are a pain in the rear where three circles join.

The deceptively rural setting of Canberra can give the impression a new-to-town driver has unintentionally hit the countryside. But more than likely, a suburban shopping centre is hiding just behind the trees and you really are not much more than a stone's throw from the civic centre.

Speaking of which, so proud of their shopping malls are Canberrans that the good old corner shop is nowhere to be seen in this town, which is a terrible shock to someone used to darting to said shop in ugg boots for an emergency carton of milk.

The shopping malls are actually few and far between and corner shops are prevalent, if slightly more small-supermarket-chain dependant than the corner-shops of other cities. I'm surprised Ms. Hurrell hasn't taken the other frequent pot-shot at Canberra: where are all the petrol stations? The answer is that you have to follow the signs to find petrol, and indeed the local shops. I believe the reason is that they are deemed, if not eye-sores, then unpleasant to behold and tucking them away off the main roads is the preferred option here.

When I first moved to Canberra in 2002 I was a little lost. Missing an exit on a freeway can sometimes mean finding yourself in a can't-get-there-from-here situation and unless you know that you can't get the Tuggeranong without going through Woden you can find yourself staring at those big green highway signs more often than not.

I've had worse experiences driving in inner-city Melbourne (J-turns are easy, BTW) because of the multiplicity of lanes and the lack of signage coming in from the Spa Region. I've even had trouble navigating in Brisbane, my home town, not least because of the one-way system in the CBD and the profusion, since I left, of various forms of traffic management magic on Coronation Drive and the new Inner City Bypass (which locals call the ICB, leading to all sorts of hilarity).

The strangest thing about Canberra is it's non-organic nature as a city. Canberra didn't evolve as such, it was Planned and as such doesn't really fit with the idea people who've grown up in a more evolved city have for how to get around. The even more interesting thing is that the Plan has, by necessity, as it has been lived by residents, been munged into some sort of planned-evolved structure and that's weird.