Canberra

Chronicles the unsavoury early life of Canberra, meanders through the graveyard at St John's where the pioneers rest, contemplates the unique social dynamics of the suburbs, visits the extraordinary cultural institutions and looks up to the mountains that surround the city.

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A strong sense of ‘otherness’ defines Canberra to a point where there is a smugness, bordering on arrogance, that the rest of Australia can hate us – but they’ll never know just how good it is to live here. Canberra is a city of orphans. People come for the jobs on offer but stay on as they discover unanticipated promise and opportunity in a city that the rest of the country loathes but can’t do without. They become Canberrans – prosperous, highly educated and proud of both the planned and unplanned elements of their city. Daley’s Canberra begins and ends at the original lake and its forgotten suburbs, traces of which can still be found on the banks of the Lake Burley Griffin, opened in 1964. It chronicles the unsavoury early life of Canberra, meanders through the graveyard at St John’s where the pioneers rest, contemplates the unique social dynamics of the suburbs, visits the extraordinary cultural institutions and looks up to the mountains that surround the city. In the national capital people might not ask you where you went to school, as they do in Melbourne, or how much you paid for house, as they do in Sydney. They ask you where you’ve come from. And how long you’re going to stay. As it turned out, after the book was first published to great acclaim the author himself moved to Sydney, a change he found wrenching. In his new Afterword, Paul Daley reflects on how much he misses Canberra as it transforms into a thriving city.

New edition of a classic with a new Afterword in which Daley reminisces about the city he loves and how much it has changed since his book was first published in 2012
One of the book’s themes is people coming and going from Canberra – even though Daley himself has moved to Sydney, he writes movingly about how so many of his family memories are there and how much he misses it
Uncovers unknown suburbs, people and facts about the place Australia loves to hate showing it’s about much more than politics
Shows that Canberra didn’t rise up fully formed after the competition to design it – it has a black – and white – history going back a long way
Full of great anecdotes and great characters: the man after whom Mount Ainslie is named and whose descendants have some surprising revelations; King O’Malley and his stagger juice; Marion Mahoney and Walter Burley Griffin; even the fictional Edith Campbell Berry
Afterword discusses the new light rail and Canberra’s real estate boom