Things to do in Canberra
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Dickson Asian Noodle House
This perennially popular Laotian and Thai cafe is usually booked up towards the end of the week, though thankfully there's always takeaway. Within minutes of ordering, eat your fill of wok-fried, Hokkien-style or soup-laden noodles. Pick of the menu is the addictive combination laksa.
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Australian National Botanic Gardens
Spread over 90 invigorating hectares on Black Mountain's lower slopes are these beautiful gardens, devoted to the growth, study and promotion of Australian floral diversity. While enjoying the gardens' tranquillity, take the Aboriginal Plant Use Walk (1km, 45 minutes), which passes through the cool Rainforest Gully. The Eucalypt Lawn is peppered with 600 species of this quintessential Aussie tree.
The visitors centre and bookshop is the departure point for free guided walks. Nearby is Hudsons in the Gardens, a pleasant cafe with a verdant aspect.
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Tak Kee Roast Inn
This one-room traditional Chinese affair, locally lauded for its skill in cooking meats, is recognisable by the skewered flesh hanging in the front window. This has the same effect on committed vegetarians that garlic has on vampires. Their won tons are superb, as is their barbecued beef brisket.
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Alanya
This long-standing, award-winning Turkish restaurant has been feeding its fans authentic delights for over 20 years. The brief but tasty menu includes vegetarian options, plates to share and stand-alone mains such as the excellent hünkar beğendi (diced lamb on a bed of eggplant).
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My Café
This small licensed café serving bruschetta, bagels and burgers attracts a breakfast crowd keen to bring their office wherever they go. With sunny sidewalk tables it is also popular for lingering lunches and espresso junkies throughout the day.
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First Floor
Overlooking Green Sq is this fine-dining, minimalist décor establishment, where the seasonal Mod Oz menus run the gamut from fish and chips to stir-fries and pasta. The desserts are truly decadent and you can sip wines from around Australia.
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Santa Lucia
Canberra's first Italian restaurant is three decades old and still going strong. Generous pasta dishes with rich sauces are delivered to the patent red-and-white-checked tablecloths, and there are kid's meals for $10 to $12.
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Silo
This accomplished bakery-cafe can be standing room only during the breakfast and lunch rushes, when locals line up to buy the exquisite homemade tarts and breads.
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Green Herring Restaurant
This place offers rustic cosiness in a 120-year-old slab hut. Don't be put off by the name – it serves Mod Oz with creative flourishes, exceptional desserts, and has a separate vegetarian menu. To get here, turn right off the Barton Hwy towards Gold Creek Village, then left at the roundabout.
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Sammy's Kitchen
This place, now in new digs, has been serving up delicious, cheap and plentiful Chinese and Malay dishes for years. Don't miss out on the prawn sambal ($18) or the Mongolian lamb ($15).
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Hippo Bar
This cosy lounge bar is popular with young cocktail slurpers who file in for Wednesday-night jazz – the turntable rules other evenings.
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Old Bus Depot Markets
This popular, decade-old indoor market specialises in handcrafted goods and regional edibles, including the output of the Canberra district's 20-plus wineries.
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War Memorial
In a stately position, overlooking Anzac Pde and Lake Burley Griffin, the magnificent war memorial is one of the finest museums in the country. This genuinely moving memorial provides a fascinating insight into how battle forged Australia’s national identity, with an enormous collection of pictures, dioramas, relics and exhibitions that detail and humanise wartime events. For military-history fans, there’s also plenty of weaponry and uniforms – most of the heavy machinery is arrayed in Anzac Hall, which features an impressive sound-and-light show. Entombed among the mosaics of the Hall of Memory is the Unknown Australian Soldier, whose remains were returned from a W…
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Old Parliament House
The venerable Old Parliament House was the seat of government from 1927 to 1988 and is a great place to get a whiff of bygone parliamentary activity. In 2009, the Old Parliament House was transformed into the Museum of Australian Democracy. The exhibits place Australia’s tradition in the context of the broader history of democracy, spanning the globe over two millennia. Notable items in the collection include a 1653 coin minted by Oliver Cromwell and the headdress worn by an Aboriginal elder as she performed the Welcome to Country for parliament’s opening in 2008, on the day the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, made his historic apology to Australia’s indigenous peoples for pa…
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National Museum of Australia
This museum is one big abstract Australian storybook. Using creativity, controversy, humour and self- contradiction, the National Museum dismantles national identity and in the process provokes visitors to come up with ideas of their own. There are lots of attendants on hand to help you navigate exhibitions on environmental change, Indigenous culture, national icons and more, and you can take one-hour guided tours. Don't miss the introductory film, shown in a small rotating theatre at the start of the exhibition rooms, which is an enjoyable audiovisual taste of the range of artefacts on show and how they form part of Australia's national identity.
Bus 34 runs here. There's…
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National Portrait Gallery
This gallery tells the story of Australia through its faces – from colonial portraits of the nation's founding families to Bill Henson's photographs of Australian conductor Simone Young and shots of celebrities such as Cate Blanchett and AC/DC's Angus Young. The several hundred works on show also tell the story of the evolution of portraiture, from wax cameos of Aboriginal tribespeople to a Day-Glo Nick Cave. The collection used to be housed at Old Parliament House, and this beautiful new purpose-built gallery is a treat in itself – it's made from wood and stone from every state and territory and its gardens are planted with varieties from all over the country.
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Namadgi National Park
Namadgi National Park includes eight peaks higher than 1700m and offers excellent opportunities for bushwalking, mountain biking, fishing, horseriding, rock climbing, abseiling and viewing Aboriginal rock art. There is camping available at Honeysuckle Creek, Mt Clear and Orroral River; bookings must be made through the Namadgi visitor centre.
There are numerous Aboriginal sites in the park, including paintings at Yankee Hat, some dating back at least 21,000 years. The area's European history dates back to the 1830s when settlers cleared the valleys for farming. Namadgi National Park was created in 1984.
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Lanyon Homestead
The beautifully restored Lanyon Homestead, beside the river near Tharwa, is about 30km (19mi) south of the city. The early stone cottage on the site was built by convicts, and the grand homestead, which dates from Canberra's grazier days, was completed in 1859.
More than a collection of pretty old buildings, this National Trust homestead documents the life of the region before Canberra existed. The Nolan Gallery in the homestead collects some of Australian painter Sydney Nolan's most famous Ned Kelly works. As you'd expect, you can get a pretty nice Devonshire tea at Lanyon.
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National Archives
Canberra’s original post office now houses the National Archives, a repository for Commonwealth government records in the form of personal papers, photographs, films, maps and paintings. There are short-term special exhibits, but the centrepiece exhibit is the Federation Gallery and its original charters, including Australia’s 1900 Constitution Act and the 1967 amendment ending constitutional discrimination against Aboriginal people. Records of military service and emigration can be accessed for those keen on exploring their ancestry.
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Lake Burley Griffin
Named after Canberra's architect, the lake was filled by damming the Molonglo River in 1963 with the 33m-high Scrivener Dam. Around its 35km-long shore are many places of interest.
Built in 1970 to mark the bicentenary of Cook's landfall, the Captain Cook Memorial Water Jet flings a 6-tonne column of water up to 147m into the air, and sometimes gives free showers, despite its automatic switch-off in strong winds. There is a skeleton globe at nearby Regatta Pointon which Cook's three great voyages are traced; also close is the National Capital Exhibition, displaying the city's history. Further east is the stone-and-slab Blundells' Cottage, built in 1860 to house workers on …
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National Zoo & Aquarium
Nestled behind Scrivener Dam is this wonderful zoo and aquarium, to which you should definitely devote a few hours. It has a roll call of fascinating animals, ranging from capuchins to sharks, and includes Australia's largest collection of big cats. Book ahead to cuddle a cheetah ($165) or take a tour behind the scenes to handfeed the lions and tigers and bears.
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Canberra Space Centre
The Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex was opened in 1965. Pride of place goes to Deep Space Station 43, a 70m-diameter dish that has communicated with the likes of Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo and various Mars probes. There are displays of spacecraft and deep-space tracking technology, plus a piece of lunar basalt scooped up by Apollo XI in 1969. A theatrette continuously screens short films on space exploration and the Moon Rock Café serves drinks and lunches.
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National Gallery
This gallery has a stunning collection of over 100,000 works of art representing four major areas: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander, Australian (from colonial to contemporary), Asian and international. Treasures range from traditional Aboriginal art to the controversial Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock. The spectacular Art of the Indian Subcontinent gallery showcases one of the largest subcontinent collections outside of India.
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Australian National University
The attractive grounds of the ANU, founded in 1946, lie between Civic and Black Mountain and make for a pleasant wander. Drop into the Drill Hall Gallery to see special exhibitions and paintings from the university's art collection; a permanent fixture is the near-phosphorescent hue of Sidney Nolan's Riverbend.
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National Library of Australia
The National Library was established in 1901 and has since accumulated over six million items, most of which can be accessed in the reading rooms. The library has been undergoing refurbishments over the past year or so, though the building has remained open and still hosts exhibits. Call ahead or check the website to find out what's on.
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