Canberra Quotations

Sourced

Canberra: There's nothing to it!
Canberra: Why wait for death?
Canberra: Gateway to everywhere else!
- Bill Bryson in Down Under, 2000 ISBN 055299703X

I have planned a city not like any other city in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any governmental authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city, a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future.
- Walter Burley Griffin, talking of his plan for Canberra, 1912, from The New York Times, Sunday, June 2, 1912

The best view of Canberra is from the back of a departing train.
- Percy Deane, Secretary of the Prime Minister's Department, 1928

It is always easy to sneer and criticise, but now that a start has been made [it is] the duty of patriotic Australians to do all that lies in their power to make this capital worthy of a Commonwealth ... That here a city may arise where those responsible for the government of this country in the future may seek and find inspiration in its noble buildings, its broad avenues, its shaded parts and sheltered gardens - a city bearing perhaps some resemblance to the city beautiful of our dreams.
- Lord Denman at a formal dinner held after its christening, March 12, 1913.

It is an expression of bureaucratic Existentialism. It exists without existing.
- Journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, 1958.

It's just like a little country town, isn't it? Charming, of course, but just a little country town.
- Katharine, Duchess of Kent after visiting Canberra, 1970.

Don't blame us, we just live here!"
- Movement set up after every political problem in Australia was blamed on Canberra, being the seat of government.