Mitchell sprawls untidily across Canberra’s grassy northern plain. You’d never go there incidentally. There’s always a reason. Most of us who’ve lived in Canberra for any real time have stood out there amid whipping winds or under a baking sun at the capital’s biggest cemetery. There, thousands of precisely trimmed rose and rosemary bushes, memorial plaques and headstones are set in an ocean of lawn surrounding a constantly exhaling redbrick crematorium.

Norwood Park defines the emotional tone of Mitchell for most of us, even though this discombobulated island of semi-industrial eclecticism also houses panel beaters and mechanics, kitchen, bathroom and roofing warehouses, porn supermarkets, brothels, hardware and plumbing suppliers.