Getting lost in Canberra
Well okay, I didn’t actually get lost. However, Canberra’s bus network is not at all visitor friendly; perhaps not even all that friendly to its regular users. I was originally going to cycle though the bike provided to me by my host was not quite up to scratch. Couldn’t get the saddle up so wouldn’t have been much fun when it came time to climb back up the hills of Belconnen. No problem though, I was happy to experiment with the buses.
So my first morning there, having arrived the previous afternoon (and had a bit of a look around the city without actually going into any attractions). Having failed with the bike, I found I had just missed the hourly bus servicing the suburb of Aranda. Knowing that the frequent buses run along Belconnen Way, I thought I’d walk up that way. Though it wasn’t another 300 metres around the corner that I actually found a bus stop outside a hospital. However, I then made the mistake of not transferring to another bus at the city interchange to get to Parliament House. Although there is a stop within walkable distance, I was hoping for another stop that was closer. Instead, the bus took me all the way out to Woden out in the suburbs of Canberra. I finally took a bus back to the city and then out to Parliament House (both old and new).
Day three and I finally had everything under control. I figured out that bus stops are indicated as white dots on the bus maps, of which knowing this made quite a difference (though didn’t make up for bus stops being quite sparse in some areas). I managed to get out to the High Court and the National Gallery of Australia before taking a bus back to the other side of the lake to get a ferry. Timing was all good until I decided I wanted to go to the War Memorial, only that I had just missed the early bus to there. Constitutional Ave goes close enough though the buses for this are dispersed all over the city interchange. Finally I asked the information people who gave me the time and bus bay for the next bus along this road fairly quickly. Visited the war memorial then when it was time to get back, it was not clear where the closer bus stopped. Missed the bus before I realised which stop it was leaving from, so had to walk the 10 minutes back down to Constitutional Ave again.
The final day I didn’t use any buses. Instead I walked up Black Mountain to the Telecom Tower, passing a wallaby on the way up. While at the top of the tower, I fielded a phone call from a journalist at a local paper back home about our own public transport woes. I gave Canberra one last look over, before making the descent back down to Aranda, where I saw an Echidna when I was almost near the bottom.
Left Canberra by train, headed for Sydney. The trip was actually far more scenic than I had expected with plenty of bush and deep cuttings through the rock. Takes a bit longer than by bus, though trains tend to be far more comfortable with more leg room, etc.
Photos of Canberra to come.