PERHAPS after a century, it’s time to “rethink our comfortable condescension with this country’s capital and its residents”, says web-based news publisher crikey.com today.

“The orchestra is limbering up and champagne is flowing around the shores of Lake Burley Griffin today as Canberrans celebrate their city’s 100th birthday. 

“Readers elsewhere may know little of these festivities and care less. Canberra is a dull, remote, overgrown provincial capital, right? Full of public servants and roundabouts, baking hot in summer, freezing in winter – you can’t even catch a train or a tram.

“Well, perhaps after a century it’s time to rethink our comfortable condescension with this country’s capital and its residents.

“It’s much closer to nature than its big sisters, Sydney and Melbourne. There are trees over the fence and kangaroos on the lawn. There are birds, there’s fresh air. There’s glorious space, there’s a bevy of interesting, well-educated people who love discussing big ideas and make for top dinner party guests. There are museums and galleries. And there’s the addictive drug of federal politics which will hit up the city again tomorrow, as Parliament resumes.”

It may not be Burley Griffin’s “ideal city”, but if you’ve written it off it might be time to think again. And wherever you stand, you have to concede one point: it really is “a city that is not like any other in the world”.