Canberra

Many people are surprised to learn that the capital city of Australia is not Sydney but in fact Canberra. But then again, there are a lot of things that could surprise you about Canberra. Firstly, it's not on the coast. Most of the major Australian cities are by the sea but Canberra is inland, and is the largest inland city in the country. It's inhabitants find themselves 300km from Sydney and 650km from Melbourne, and this is no coincidence. The site for the nation's capital was chosen as a compromise to settle the dispute as to which city should become the capital. Canberra was a planned city, which is also quite unusual.

In 1911 a competition to design Canberra was announced. Anybody interested in it had nine months to present their entries. Initially there was quite a lot of opposition to the idea that the sole judge of the competition would be the Minister for Home Affairs, King O'Malley rather than a panel of qualified architects and engineers. However, O'Malley insisted that those were the rules one could take it or leave it. Models of the site were sent all over the world and by the deadline there were a total of 137 entries. The judging process was long and O'Malley appointed three experts to help him - an architect, an engineer and a surveyor. They discussed whether the entries had met the requirements of the competition, whether there were enough green areas, if the residential areas were far enough from industrial areas and whether it was grand enough to be the national capital.

After a few weeks they had eliminated two thirds of the entries. The remaining plans were then re-evaluated and only 11 remained. The panel could not agree on a winner in the end and so O'Malley agreed to accept the majority verdict. At a grand press conference he opened the envelope which contained the name of the winner, which was Walter Griffin from Chicago, USA. It is said that his design won because it incorporated all the natural features of the area instead of trying to change them.

So now, coming up for a century later, 325,000 people live here and seem to be pretty happy about it. Apart from being an aesthetically beautiful place, it's a city which seems to work. It has a much lower unemployment rate than the rest of Australia, the people earn good money, and house prices are relatively low. The inhabitants are relatively young and well educated. The average age is 32 and almost a third have a university qualification. It's pretty cosmopolitan too. There's a lot of people from The UK and New Zealand as well as China, Italy, Greece and Germany. They would appear to get on, too - the murder rate here is much lower than the national average.

What else can I tell you? Well, if you want to go surfing you have to drive 150 km to get to the coast. You can celebrate Canberra Day on the 19th March. The summers are hot and the winters are cold. To find out more, pay a visit - judging by the number of tourists who come every year you'll have a good time.