Canberra Couch Surfing

Kat, my Canberra host!

Whenever I mentioned to people in Sydney that I was heading to Canberra next they invariably asked "Why?" I thought it was kind of rude to challenge a traveler's choice of stop, but it seems to be a national joke to make fun of their capital city. After two nights there, I honestly don't know what they are joking about. I had an awesome time in Canberra.

Yes, it's a planned city and the layout feels precise and geometric, unlike how cities usually sprawl and surge with awkward corners. But the avenues are broad and the vistas are quite pretty, especially along the manmade lakefront. My couch surfing host, Kat, very kindly lent me her bicycle so I was able to toddle around from the war memorial at one end over to the museums along the lake and back through the city center very easily. They allow you to ride on the sidewalks in Canberra so even at rush hour you don't have to compete with the car traffic on the main roads.

The dome of the Australian War Memorial can been seen from several spots around the city. One of the large avenues leads you from the memorial towards the lake, with individual memorials to the various wars of the last two centuries all along the path. The Australians take their wars and service people's sacrifice very seriously and often combine theirs and New Zealand's together as ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). The Canberra Memorial is beautifully designed and every day people still bring their poppies to place near the names of loved ones who sacrificed for their country. The memorial to the unknown soldier lies within a stain glass decorated tomb. Riding past the individual war memorials I noticed several groups of fatigue-clad military heading up the avenue to pay their respects.

Cycling along the lake reminded me a bit of the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC, with the scores of runners and cyclists out for their daily routines weaving in between the families with strollers. The National Carillon played its tunes at appointed times and they could be heard all along the waterfront.


I really loved the National Gallery of Australia and spent several hours surveying their aboriginal art galleries as well as other contemporary Australian art. The aboriginal sections had both traditional and contemporary political art, which I found the most compelling. The treatment of aboriginal people in Australia has not been one to be very proud of and these artists made strong statements through their work. Though they had a large Renaissance exhibit on while I was there, I wanted to spend the time viewing things I can't normally see, which was well worth it.

The National Gallery's sculpture park was particularly well-designed. Instead of being able to see everything laid out before you as some urban parks do, you could wander among the trees and suddenly discover a new piece to admire. Particularly eerie is a gathering of heads jutting out just above the waterline. They all stare straight ahead, some in varied directions. It's near one of the museum restaurants and I can imagine it being very strange to be eating your lunch or dinner while this small army of heads observes you.

Enough about culture, the real fun of Canberra was being with Kat and her boyfriend, Ed, in their lovely home. Each night Kat would serve up something healthy and hot and we'd sip red wine while getting to know one another. Bouma, the Hungarian pointer, would nose around occasionally and give us a good excuse for some walks. One morning Kat led me up a hill to see the city, but I was more excited to see the wild kangaroos and wallabies. We saw mothers and small ones ambling about. Plus a couple of rather tall male roos off on their own. They weren't scared of the humans, but Bouma scattered them a bit when he started lumbering around.

On my last morning the sky was clear and we had a bit of time before I flew to Melbourne, so Ed started up the Model A he had rebuilt and gave me a guided tour of the rest of Canberra. The car was sputtering and backfiring a bit, but running around with no roof on a fine day was just splendid. Ed has a penchant for old machines and showed off his unique Italian coffee maker and the double-decker bus and he drove me to the airport in their Citroen.