I’ve rarely met an Australian who doesn’t feel given a happy licence, as soon as I say where I’m from, to tear into my hometown, or offer condolences. For many of them, their only experience of Canberra is as a metonym in the news for the government, Labor or Coalition, alongside some dubious decision of policy. Or, if they were unlucky, their experience might extend to the infamous, bleak ‘Year 6 trip to Canberra’, where students are dragged through the miserable, lightless warrens of Parliament House. That trip seems to have been created to disaffect the Australian population from the workings of parliament and instil in them a kind of Pavlovian boredom on hearing the word ‘Canberra’.

Then, there’s the large population of non-Canberra expatriates imported in for public service and making regular, pining trips back to the outside world, complaining about the lack of things to do, the freezing winters, and the excess of roundabouts.