I went to the Australian capital a few days ago because, well, it's one of those things I'd like not to be ever caught out on again, not remembering which city the capital is. As Bill Bryson opened his book `Down Under` with the observation that he had again forgotten who the Australian prime minister is, I too now pose the same question to you all.

Anyone? Anyone at all? This is one of our only seven continents, the largest island on Earth and 4th largest English speaking country in the world (after USA; UK; Canada), of the largest majority-English speaking cities worldwide Sydney and Melbourne take 3rd and fifth place, and the economy can happily compete with the largest Western European powers of Germany, the UK, France and Italy. We sent half our working class there in the 19th Century for fuck's sake, someone ought to know who's running the place.

But being here now, for many reasons, it's pretty easy to understand why the outside world more or less leaves the Aussies to it. Australia is, as observed by Mr. Bryson, mostly empty and a long way away, and this hardly lends a perfectly incised slice of Aussie life to the average locker-room chat in Milan, Seattle or Leaminton Spa. Even now I still catch myself dumbly thinking the capital to be Sydney for that first second, the next second spent wondering why the hell I was bothering to think of it at all. Such is the detachment of Australia from the rest of the world; so I figured that if I actually went to the capital myself the place might make an impression.
It didn't even try to which is Canberra in a nutshell, from one point of view, but in a spirit of enquiry I worked hard against myself to make sure I, personally, would remember. It is a total non-plus of a place, even the police looked too bland for any action, so to get anything out of it you have to make your own life difficult.

The first thing that struck me was that is the most spacious city with the least in it I have ever seen, or could imagine. It was built into the landscape rather than over it, and as such the design and layout fit in with existing natural features and the architect, one Walter Burley Griffin, saw fit to leave an awful lot of nature in between everything, such as every road, street and building space.

To say there are a multitude of parks and open spaces in Canberra is to laugh mockingly at your own poor feet after they have voyaged to the shops and back for some milk. There are almost no densely packed areas, no huddles streets or compact houses, no tenement flats with less than several hectares of lawn, and no halfway-decent size of road without a small grassy plain between the two opposing carriageways in all that I saw. But then, I only walked for about 4 hours so really I hardly left the town centre.

That's a bloody laugh in its own right, in fact: there is no town centre. Okay, I admit I am being a little harsh on Canberra but it was a bloody cold day, the place is a vacuum of interest and an plague of gigantic dual-carriageways with acres of greenland in between, and every road sign has its own little garden, or so it seems.
The reason I'm actually pissed off about it because the buses are so dreadful, or rather one company of buses has stops and signs everywhere but not one of them lists the locations it chooses to brush past, only the times. Buses in England may be unethically late and creaky and full of things you'd rather avoid (schoolchildren, penknife graffiti, bus drivers) but the stops at least help you out with the geography of the enterprise.
Of course there is another company that runs buses as well, but they have no signs anywhere apart from the few (very few) clusters of life such as local precints and arcades, and the alleged town centre (which is really a small-town precinct that just goes on for longer) and that was the type of bus I needed.

I walked for 2 hours away from the Parliament building, the only thing I had come to see and the only one I had time for anyway, apparently, and for a full 90 minutes I saw not one shop, not one residential building that looked like anyone actually lived there (no cars in parking lots, no flowers at windows, no rubbish or rubbish bins) and only about a dozen individuals on the streets that whole time, so I think that central Canberra is that most terrifying of places; a business district; that just goes on for ever...

My personal fear of business, dressing smartly and going to work probably cloud my judgement here of course ;)

It truly was the most amazingly sterile, lifeless, businesslike place though. And it was exceedingly fucking cold.

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Anyway I was just pissed off with the buses. As a city, and the same can be said for Melbourne although to a far lesser extent, you are always aware that it is a big clump of manmadeness in the middle of an awful lot of nature. From Canberra especially you can see mountains in the distance on just about every horizon from most points in the centre. Of course as the centre smears itself over such a vast area this is all the more impressive.
There is also the matter of the lake, Lake Burley Griffin, which effectively cuts the city into two halves although I'm not sure why old Walt really bothered as they put equal amounts of fuck-all into each half. Still, the lake, in the general trend of things, is enormous and unwieldy and difficult probably also quite difficult to walk across, but it does look a lot prettier then the rest of the place in the middle of the Aussie Winter.

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Now, fact fans, I have a little, a very little in fact, reserach and information for you about Canberra and its history and why the capital isn't Sydney, for one thing.
The capital rests inside the Australain capital Territory, the ACT, dug neatly into the lands of New South Wales, which seems a little bit odd as there was already a big city, more than one in fact right nearby.

See, along with other observations about the Aussie people, seen below, there is also a glaring feature of the national psyche: they really do love a fight, oh yes.
Saturday night here in Sydney was an education, that's all I'm saying for now.
It has been noted by myself and others while travelling in India and Thailand, Laos, Cambodia etc. that Aussies, especially those from Sydney in fact like to have a punch-up. Back in the early 20th Century Sydneysiders (yes that's what they're known as. Now you know) and Melburnians were particularly fond of fighting each other in every arena from parliament to the gladiatorial bloodbowl (well I'm sure they would if they could have) about who got to be the capital city of this proud, newly-federated nation.
They argues about it so much, in fact, that the government of the time could only solve the problem by building an entire fucking city to be the capital instead of either the brawling towns, which just goes to show that they did rather have to be taken seriously.
Makes Our Dwayne fighting with Our Sherryl over What She Said About Our Mam At Grampa's Funeral seem a bit trivial, what?

So in came W. Burley Griffin, his wife apparently drew up the actual designs which were a million times more beautifully made than anyone else who had a pop (the government held a competition to design the new Australian capital for architects from all around the world) and the result was this gloriously spacious and bloody awkward to walk city we have there today.

More than that I can't say without ripping off Bryson any more, and as I've already done that at least twice and Pratchett once already I'm going to sit here shamefully and finish the thing.

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I have been meaning to properly research the different definitions of the Australian geography as thought of by the locals, and find out exactly what and where the `bush` and the `outback` actually are. I'm guessing that the massive desert in the middle of the country is the outback bit, but what, where, and why the outback is I'm not sure yet. One for future editions I think.

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I have been trying with better luck to understand Australians and the news is usually rather good. They are quick to talk, always ask how you are and wish you a nice day, which may be just the reflex of a lifetime's learning but it's better than the silence and/or indeterminate grunts with which most shop staff and barpeople issue you with in England when you enter or leave their premises.
They are amazingly quick to help, also. I have casually asked in shops for a whole bunch of stuff; where to get power adaptors, what times and places trains go, where bus stops are, whether drinking on the street is illegal or not (it isn't, but it very recently used to be) and how to pronounce various product and place names; and most of the time I haven't been answered - I have been educated to the very fullness of the knowledge of whoever it was I asked. They do not mind explaining things and helping strangers out to the best of their ability. It is absolutely wonderful.

They are also polite yet very direct, and they do not like a smartarse, oh no, so I quickly stopped being one once I realised it. I've been used to lonely Asia for 9 weeks where I can't converse meaningfully with the locals (99.999% of people) and have to really engage the fellow travellers I meet, and the rest of the time I've been stuck inside my own head slowly grinding down my own identity into loose mush, so I did, I must admit, find it a little hard being around and interacting with people again on a full-time basis.

But I'm all okay now. The me that would be me if I had only said yes to that lift home that time agrees with me too. ;)

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I did find, amongst the vortex that is Canberra, a really cool steak restaurant and a chatty barmaid who seemed a little over-friendly if you know what I mean, so like the dashing hero genius I am I said a bunch of weird things then ignored her.
People can be so difficult to deal with sometimes, don't you think?

The restaurant was unique in my experience in that the customers cook the food themselves, neatly saving on both the cost of a chef and, presumably, the need for food-hygiene insurance as they can always blame the poor bastard in the toilet drastically evacuating protein for his own malady. Not the nicest way to do business, but surely one of the most cost-effective.
It would, I feel, be an appropriate kind of policy for the city, as by the size of the business district (more or less everything I saw apart from the odd little suburb I stayed in) the whole place is turned over the business of sin and evil, or rather to the collection and consumption of money.

I've been mulling this over recently, in light of the need for new jobs in unexpected sectors, and I've come to rather hate most business' because they just turn human beings into greedy standing meat.
I've never actually been one for moderation, and if you can get bllions of dollars without becoming completely false and mostly evil, then fair play - more power to you - but all I see in professionals and business these days is a complete lack of humanity and a desire to just have and have numbers without ever really doing anything. Plus it's all so fucking fake - the unnecessary jargon when perfectly good words already exist, the underhanded manipulations of customers and colleagues, the sideways-on view of the world that treats everyone as though they had a number over their heads.
But I digress;

Best thing about Canberra, and Melbourne as well is that the city provides for its people.
There are facilities everywhere, from a huge number of public toilets for the people on the streets (in Melbourne, one every kilometre or so on the paths lacing through the generous public parks, in Canberra one every 40,000 square miles or one for every 12 people on the streets) every park and open space also has water fountains at regular intervals, much more regular than the toilets in fact.

The paths are universally wide in green areas, wide enough to driver a tractor down but of course all is the preserve of the pedestrian, and of the pedestrians a frighteningly large proprtion are jogging.

Yes, those pesky healthy people are at it again, everywhere I bloody turn I can't find anyone equally or more chubby than I am under the age of forty, and all the rest of them are wearing fucking tracksuits. There are so many joggers in some places that I wonder if I haven't stepped into a personal hell, and whether everyone will at some random time turn to face and, point, and start laughing.
Apart from the occasional bout of paranoia (way, waaay too long traveling on my own..) it seems more like a training ground and it all the more admirable, I suppose, that so many people are jogging and that so many of everyone else expects it and moves out of the way accordingly. I'm not really behind the idea of cyclists on the pavements which seems to be legal here, but as a pavement is typically the size of an English road it probably doesn;t matter much.

In any case, I'm almost feeling like I should do something about it at last. Here in Sydney (which I have far nicer things to say about :) ) I have begun playing little games with myself to trick me into getting off the couch and getting some exercise besides walking, which I do a heroic amount of but sadly it does not shift the flab, so I went and bought a load of expensive designer clothing (Arghh, my wallet!!) today all one size too small.
It's about the only way I'll do the right thing, I think.