Friday, June 6, 2014

Canberra: an American perspective


Readers of the blog will know I grew up in Canberra and still have a soft spot for the city.

I read in the Fairfax newspapers this morning that The New York Times had published a  travel piece on the Canberra. It's nice to see a positive travel story about Canberra – or that an American newspaper would even think of writing an article about the city. Indeed, if you're American, chances are that you've never even heard of Canberra.

When I was living in the US, the conversation with people tended to go something like this:

American: Where are you from?
Me: Australia.
American: Where in Australia?
Me: Canberra [at this point I learnt to say 'Canberra' really slowly as if I was talking to a 2 year old]
American: Where's that?
Me: It's between Sydney and Melbourne. It's the Capital of Australia.
American: Really? I thought the capital was ____________ [insert 'Sydney' or 'Melbourne'].

Hopefully it will make people more aware of the city (in a good way).

1 comment:

Dina Roberts said...

I'm American and we went to Canberra!

I love it there.

But yeah...before I knew much about Australia, I did think Sydney was the capital.