Canberra

Canberra – The Peacemaker Capital

Nowhere in Australia does a city emerge to become the nation’s capital from the stories of two cities, Sydney and Melbourne, gallop gallantly into each other and so doing settling a conflict. Canberra, the national capital and National Capital Territory of Australia is where Sydney and Melbourne, the former older than the latter, meet to shake hands and pat each other with, let it be, old friends, we both belong to Australia afterall.

The name ‘Canberra’ has aboriginal origins. It is believed to derive from the various renditions into written English of the Ngambri, the indigenous people of the area which is one of the family groups that make up the Ngunnawal nation. John Moore, a non-Aboriginal landowner named his property “Canberry Station” with the first name transcribed from Ngambri.

In the Ngunnawal language, the name is said to mean ‘meeting place’ which fits very well what happens between Sydney and Melbourne in their battle to clinch the national capital trophy that eventually eluded them. One can say that Sydney and Melbourne meet in Camberra to unite and in doing so, take the whole of Australia with them. Indeed, right indeed so, Canberra is a diplomatic compromise to solve once and for all times, the individual claim of Sydney and Melbourne as the rightful national capital of Australia.

Even if the other explanation for the name in which the Aboriginal word, Nganbra means “hollow between a woman’s breasts’ is accepted, Canberra remains the place where two odds meet to make peace or the very place through which the left and the right flow to become one.   

The city, which was designed by Walter Burley Griffin, is famous, amongst others, for its circular flow of streets. It has spacious areas of parkland and a circular layout around the Parliamentary Centre. The circular flowing streets are confusing at the first encounter but once one gets used to them, they make for easy access to all parts of the city.

Like everywhere in Australia, there are many places of magnetic attraction in Canberra. Some of these are the long, long Lake Burley Griffin which honours the architect of the city, All Saints Church, Australian Institute of Sport, Australian National Botanic Gardens and Australian National Library, Australian National University, Bungendore Village Square, Canberra Deep Space Communications Centre, Captain Cook Memorial Water Jet, Casino Canberra, Cockinton Green, Cotter Dam and Reserve, Cuppacumbalong Craft, the Federation Square, Government House and the international Embassies.