11 things Americans might not know about Australia’s capital

This surprises more Americans than Australians would like to admit. Australia's capital is Canberra, a juncture the Ngunnawal peoples have inhabited for over 20,000 years, long before the federal government commissioned it as a capital in the early 20th century. The name "Canberra" is thought to come from an Aboriginal word for "meeting place." In 1908, the Australian government selected the site as a neutral ground between Sydney and Melbourne, where the planned Australian Capital Territory (ACT) would be built. Planners designed the street grid, the parliament, the museums and the lake from scratch, which is part of why Canberra looks and feels like nowhere else in Australia. 

When married Chicago architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin entered the international competition to design Australia's new capital in 1912, they submitted as a team. Their entry won, but only Walter's name was on it. Marion—who could draft such excellent drawings that Frank Lloyd Wright himself once tried to take credit for them—made sure their bid stood out. However, she omitted her name from the entry, worried a female name would discredit the work.  

"Her contributions and story were actively written out,” said Sita Sargeant, founder of She Shapes History, a walking tour company that spotlights women's contributions to Australia’s past. “They didn't attach her name to the competition entry because of the assumption that if a woman's name was attached, it wouldn't be taken seriously."  

Marion Mahoney Griffin is now recognized as one of the most significant figures in the city's founding, a correction that took the better part of a hundred years. 

Canberra sits inside a valley ringed by mountain ranges, and the boundary between city and bushland is as organic as the 20 varieties of native eucalyptus growing throughout the territory. Just 40 minutes from the city center, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve has operated as a nature reserve site since 1936. It covers nearly 5,500 hectares and borders Namadgi National Park in the northern tip of the Australian Alps.  

"In a big city, you might visit Sydney or Melbourne and spend 40 minutes stuck in traffic," said Jessica Ward, manager of the Tidbinbilla Visitor Center. "In Canberra you can spend that same 40 minutes in a car and you're going to be out in the middle of the Australian bush."  
 
That short drive puts visitors face-to-face with platypus, koalas, kangaroos and critically endangered species, says Ward. “We've got some of the obvious Australian animals that everybody knows and loves,” she says. Kangaroos, wallabies, potoroos and bandicoots roam wild behind predator-proof fencing that keeps foxes and feral cats out. Ward also considers Tidbinbilla among the best places in Australia to see a platypus.  

The southern brush-tailed rock wallaby, a small marsupial native to Australia's eastern mountain ranges, is the official mammal emblem of the ACT. That means it holds the same symbolic status for the territory that the bald eagle does for the United States.  

This is an unlikely honor for a species on the brink: the wallaby has not been spotted in the wild in the ACT since the 1950s, and fewer than 40 wild are believed to survive in the country. Tidbinbilla runs the only local breeding program working to keep the species alive, alongside similar programs for the northern corroboree frog—which Ward calls “gorgeous”—and the Canberra grassland earless dragon, two other critically endangered animals. 

“We're helping to build a genetically strong population as well so that they can thrive out in the wild where they belong,” says Ward.

As a four-seasoned climate, Canberra changes character across the seasons, with wildflowers blooming in spring, from September through November. The city bursts to life with over a million blooms during the Floriade festival in Commonwealth Park. And in the summer, Ward says the long sunny days produce grass that’s “just golden on the hills,” while the native orchids are in bloom all around.  

During mountain hikes in autumn, visitors can spot fungi while snow-capped peaks become visible from the valley floor in winter. “The blue skies of a Canberra winter are unbeatable,” said Ward. “It's just breathtaking to see the valley ringed by the snow-capped mountains” 

Unlike in most densely populated capital cities shrouded in light pollution, constellations twinkle with surprising clarity in the bush capital, making Canberra one of Australia’s best urban astronomy destinations.   

Mount Stromlo Observatory, about 20 minutes up the road from Canberra’s Central Business District, hosts regular public stargazing sessions for visitors who want to extend their time outside the city. Through the observatory’s telescopes, visitors can spot Jupiter’s moons, distant galaxies and nebulae otherwise invisible to the naked eye, all with the guidance of knowledgeable astronomers after dark. The site is open daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and during the daytime, guests can explore the Heritage Trail lined with 11 interpretive signs that recount the story of the observatory’s 1928 origins. 

For stargazing experiences beyond the observatory, tourists can join evening tours along the Murrumbidgee River, or simply look up in admiration while camping out in the bush.    

Near Canberra’s Australian Parliament House, the Centenary Women’s Suffrage Fountain is easy to pass by without a second glance. A low, tiled installation, it looks almost at first like a decorative stop on the way to the Old Parliament House Gardens, with glossy blue and green squares forming a mosaic.  

But upon a closer look, those tiles actually outline a timeline of milestones for women in Australian federal politics, marking the dawn of the suffrage movement that made sure women could be seen and heard in government. The colors—green, white and violet—carry a coded message tied to the suffragette movement. 

"It's in the colors of the suffragettes. The green, white and violet is a very sneaky acronym for ‘Give Women Votes,’” explained Sargeant. “It's this beautiful timeline of the first women in federal politics and government.” 

Like the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., Canberra's major cultural attractions—the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the National Museum of Australia and more—charge no admission.  

"The government very early on designated that free access to the national collections is a core part of what we do," said Dr. Nick Mitzevich, director of the National Gallery of Australia. “At times, there are charges for special exhibitions, but you can experience all of the cultural collections for free in Australia.” 

Furthermore, nearly all of those cultural attractions sit within roughly a one-mile radius of each other, within the National Triangle along Lake Burley Griffin. 

Most of Australia's Parliament House is buried beneath a grassy hill. To American eyes, accustomed to the neoclassical grandeur of Washington’s federal buildings, that might make it appear invisible. But an Australian may tell you that's exactly the point. 

"It was a symbolic assertion that the people, the landscape and the mechanics of governance are one," Mitzevich muses about the Parliament building’s design.  

The boldest architectural statements in Canberra, he explains, were reserved for the cultural attractions. "The National Gallery’s architecture is quite radical," he says. Designed by the visionary Cole Madigan, Mitzevich calls it an "extraordinary brutalist temple" of concrete, glass and mirror-finished steel. 

“It was, from the very beginning, planned to be a provocative statement about the modernity of culture in Australia,” Mitzevich explained. "There’s no 19th-century facade. No classical Greek columns. It asserts a modernity that is very, very bold.” 

Mitzevich added that the choice was fitting for Canberra, a comparatively young capital only formally designated as such in 1913. The choice to emphasize cultural attractions over government buildings might defy a person’s preconceived notions of what a federal district is meant to do. 

“That is one of the interesting things about Canberra,” he said. “The mechanics of governance are subtle, while the cultural presence is bold.” 

In that way, Sergeant says a visit to Canberra “takes you deeper” than other experiences in Australia. “You will come away really understanding the place.”

As a political city, Canberra has an espionage undercurrent, but with an extra dash of feminism. 

During World War II, young single women worked in a small bunker-like building next to one of Canberra’s earliest government offices. Known as the Cable Girls, they decoded and encoded messages for the Prime Minister's office.  

Because of Australia’s marriage bar—a policy that required women in the public service to resign once they married—many of these women had few career options and this often became their last job before retirement. "They were seeing and knowing what was happening during World War II before anyone else in Canberra and before the Prime Minister," Sargeant said. “They had such a profound impact on the war.” 

The building has since been converted to a bike shed, its history almost entirely erased. 

Canberra might not be the city you expect, but that’s exactly the point. Between its bushland edges, hidden histories and distinct cultural heartbeat, Australia’s capital fascinates the curious traveler. Visitors might come for the politics, but they stay for the platypuses and the Pollocks.