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Goodberry's Frozen Custard Shop [Erindale ph. 6296 7033] - the banana thickshake is highly recommended

From an article Thinking outside the paddock, Spectrum section, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 April 2001:

Canberra seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's been downhill from there, writes Elizabeth Farrelly, who puts the new national museum on the slippery side
Riddle: what kind of place constructs a vast, expensive empty paddock as its symbolic national city? Don't get me wrong. I like Canberra. I like its leafiness, its crisp, sweet air, its lawny monumentality. I like its absurdities, its vast, illegible, lunatic symbolism. I even like its emptiness, the sense of having stumbled upon the greened-over ruin of some ancient city which the gnomes still devotedly maintain despite having clean forgotten why it exists.

From The Wrong Way Home, by Peter Moore (Bantam, Australia, 1999):

In Islamabad, like Canberra in Australia, is a purpose-built capital. [...] Circles or squares, the effect is the same in both cities - ordered, neat, but ultimately soulless environments full of politicians and bureaucrats.
In contrast, the bus I caught to Islamabad was prepared to make some sort of statement. It looked like a giant Hawaiian shirt [...]
[Chapter 12, Pakistan, p. 185]
My Lonely Planet guidebook on Australia reckoned that Australians hate Canberra because of school excursions. I disagree. I think Canberra is actually the perfect school excursion destination. You get to see the few interesting things in Canberra while you are young - the War Memorial, the National Art Gallery, Parliament House - and hence have no reason to ever go back there.
[Chapter 25, Sydney, p. 383]
[More quotes from The Wrong Way Home]

From "The Road Most Travelled" by Michael McGirr, Sydney Morning Herald travel section, p. 3, 30 Oct 2004:

There are now more McDonald's restaurants on the Hume [Highway] than there are towns. There are far fewer billboards on the new road than the old road and most of the ones that remain tell you how long it is to the next burger, fry or tortured chook. They measure in minutes the time until you can find something to eat to relieve your boredom.
One of the strangest of these is on the way to Yass. The big golden "M" stands in front of the name of the town. If you look twice, "M Yass" actually spells "My ass". The sign says "My ass. Open six am."

From Down Under [also published under the title In a Sunburned Country] by Bill Bryson:

In 1996 the prime minister, John Howard, caused a stir after his election by declining to live in Canberra. He would, he announced, continue to reside in Sydney and commute to Canberra as duties required. As you can imagine, this caused an uproar among Canberra's citizens, presumably because they hadn't thought of that themselves. What made this particularly interesting is that John Howard is by far the dullest man in Australia. Imagine a very committed funeral home director - someone whose burning ambition from the age of eleven was to be a funeral home director, whose proudest achievement in adulthood was to be elected president of the Queanbeyan and District Funeral Home Directors Association - then halve his personality and halve it again, and you have pretty well got John Howard. When a man as outstandingly colorless as John Howard turns his nose up at a place, you know it must be worth a look.
[Chapter 6, p. 91] MP3 audio of quote (956 Kbyte)
I glanced at my watch, appalled to realize it was only ten minutes after ten, and ordered another beer, then picked up the notebook and pen and, after a minute's thought, wrote, "Canberra awfully boring place. Beer cold, though." Then I thought for a bit more and wrote, "Buy socks." . . . Then I decided to come up with a new slogan for Canberra. First I wrote, "Canberra -- There's Nothing to It!" and then "Canberra -- Why Wait for Death?"
[Chapter 6, p. 96]

Images from The *New* Monster that Ate Canberra by Michael Salmon:

	This page last changed: 16 Apr 2010
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