Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 340000, it is Australia's largest inland city. Canberra offers a fantastic lifestyle for you. Much of what is best about Australia can be found in the nation's capital - it's a clean, safe and relaxed place to live. Considering all that, it's a remarkably pleasant place to visit.

Visitors to the city often complain that they can never find the centre. One frequently hears this complaint from people who are actually standing in it at the time. Canberra, the political, diplomatic and administrative capital of the Commonwealth, is simply not built as a commercial city, and so far it has stubbornly refused to look or act like on.

In fact, what it looks most like, apart from a spread of pleasantly wooded suburbs, is a king of semi-dignified Disneyland, complete with a Captain Cook Memorial Water Jet which flings water a towering 140 metres into the air. Visitors are impressed or bemused by the city's uncluttered, circular road system that tends to lead the unwary around in circles.

Although the city is Australia's political and diplomatic capital, it can seem surprisingly casual, with low-key security. The best times to visit are in spring or in autumn. In spring it's fresh end green, and covered with blossom and wattle; in autumn the weather is balmy, and the yellowing, rusting leaves of the deciduous trees are strikingly beautiful.

Canberra is still growing. For a place conceived by accident, built by bureaucrats and located on a compromise, it's doing surprisingly well.