Day-Trip to Canberra 19/09/2012

I met a German girl at breakfast yesterday, who has been in Sydney a couple of weeks longer than me. That’s why she felt entitled to give me “advise”; our conversation went something like this:

Girl: What are you going to do while you’re here?

Me: Well, today I’m going to take a ferry to Cockatoo Island and –

Girl (interrupting): You don’t want to see that.

Me: - and on Wednesday, I’m going to go on a day-trip to Canberra –

Girl (interrupting): You don’t want to see that.

How annoying! If you need to tell me what you liked or didn’t like, do it, for God’s sake, but don’t TELL me what I do or do not want to see. What a horrible person.

Today I went to Canberra (which, by the way, is pronounced Can-Bra). It’s a 4 ½ hour train ride from Sydney, but because all hostels are overpriced in Can-Bra, a day-trip had to be enough for me. Remember I don’t really have to pay for the train because of my backtracker ticket which allows me to use as many of the company’s trains and coaches for a month as I want. The train departed Central at just before 7am, and once you leave the suburbs of Sydney behind, the trip itself is worth the effort. Beautiful landscapes, bushlands, hills and rivers; kangaroos chilling out next to the railway. It’s a part of the country you don’t get to see when you stick to the coastline and the big cities.

Can-Bra itself seemed a bit boring and annoying to me at first. Boring because there’s hardly any people in the streets, and annoying because the sights are all spread out over the city, which is very inconvenient if you (like me) don’t want to buy a day-pass for the bus here. I decided to not stress out and just look at a few things instead of wasting the beautiful spring day on a bus. From the railway station, I started out in the wrong direction (no sense of orientation, or map-reading skills for that matter) but noticed soon enough. About an hour’s march will take you from the station to Capitol Hill with Parliament House, which was my main goal. I snapped another church on the way before I finally got there. Parliament House is pretty cool, but feels outlandish because on the whole of Capitol Hill, there’s only so few people around. I went inside and had a look around; it’s quite fancy there and you have to pass metal detectors, which, for the first time in my life, did not go off. There’s even a post office in there and I was finally able to send Jenny’s card.

Because I didn’t want to miss my train back (5pm), I chose not to stray too far. Instead, I walked straight down all of Capitol Hill until I got to Lake Burley Griffin. On the way, you pass Old Parliament House, some parks, memorials, and a cool artificial valley. Took lots of photos, naturally. The lake is beautiful, with the trees fresh in bloom, but again, hardly any people around. I felt like a character in a post-apocalyptic movie. It was down at the lake that I noticed my “sunburn”. I had spent ten minutes sitting in the sunshine by the fountain in front of Parliament House. Apparently, that was enough. The scary thing is, the skin is not even red. It’s kind of brownish grey with a touch of purple. Gross. I put lots of lotion on and my jacket as well, just to be sure. I then walked back on a small footpath next to the lake, which turns out to be a lot shorter than the way I took earlier that day. I probably would have had time enough to walk further into the city, but I didn’t want to risk it because of the train, so I just relaxed in another park for a while. My take on Can-Bra is this: if you have limited time and funds, this city is something you don’t have to see. But if you get a chance, go there. The architecture and layout of Parliament House and Capitol Hill are amazing, and the trip there will show you remarkable Australian landscapes. Just don’t expect to be blown away by the vibe of the city, because there is no vibe. As there are no people. And I don’t think another capital in the world has a railway station this small.