My introduction to Canberra

 In my earliest memory of Canberra, I was probably less than five years old.  I was sitting in the back seat of the family car.  I think my younger sister was there too, but I really can’t be certain.  She certainly wasn’t saying anything.

Neither was I.

Because something was wrong.

We weren’t lost, because that would imply that we didn’t know where we were.  We knew where we were.  We were on State Circle.

The problem was that we had been there before on this drive.  Several times.

I kept my mouth shut.  All I could have done was to point out that we’d been here before.  And then Dad would have shouted at me.  So I didn’t say it.  

Between our trips around State Circle, we drove through the streets surrounding it.  These days, I know it as Embassy territory.  And the place where government departments live.  They are large, impersonal buildings that have (at best) small and discrete plaques identifying their function.  The landscape surrounding those buildings is manicured.  There is green grass, carefully mown and heavily watered.  There are tree-lined boulevards.  And there are no people.

People don’t belong there.  

For the grownup me, living in Canberra, I know it as a place where people work.  It’s not a place that people enjoy being in.

The child version of me thought it was seriously creepy.

It didn’t help that every time we turned off State Circle, we would drive through those streets, and then find ourselves back on State Circle again.  It was almost like some eldritch being was hiding in the middle, twisting the streets around us so that we kept going back to the middle again.

It must have been frustrating for it, since Parliament House wasn’t there then and the only people who could have had access to it were its initiates, and whoever they’d managed to drag in for sacrifice.

Eventually, of course, we escaped from the being’s clutches.  

But these days, I can understand why people think Canberra is boring.  Because when they visit this place, they come as children on their school trips, and they are taken to all the properly sanctioned places: Geoscience Australia.  The War Memorial.  Parliament House.  If they’re lucky, Questacon.  If they’re unlucky, Parliament will be in session, and they’ll find out for themselves what a horrifying spectacle politics can be.

Personally, as an adult, I like living here, and largely because most of the rest of the country stays away.  The fewer people around, the better, as far as I am concerned.

But I’m not going to start worshipping any eldritch beings in order to do so.