Dr. Lee Stoner, our Director of Academic Affairs writes:

I recently came back from a visit to Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). I was actually on site helping to start our new Exercise Physiology program at the Australian Institute of Sport. However, while there, four of the students (Trevor, Adam, Heeral and Mary) and I made some time to explore Australia’s capital city.

Lee and students in front of Parliament House

Canberra, population 350,000, is 280 kilometers southwest of Sydney and 660 kilometers northeast of Melbourne. The site of Canberra was selected for the location of the nation’s capital in 1908 as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s two largest cities.

Unusual among Australian cities, Canberra is an entirely planned city. Following an international contest for the city’s design, a blueprint by the Chicago architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin was selected and construction commenced in 1913.

Situated at the heart of the city is Parliament House, opened in 1988 by Queen Elizabeth II. (Prior to 1988, the Parliament of Australia met in the Provisional Parliament House, which was constructed in 1927 and is now known as “Old Parliament House.”) From above the site is in the shape of two boomerangs enclosed within a circle. Much of the building is buried beneath Capital Hill, but the meeting chambers and accommodation for parliamentarians are free-standing within the boomerang-shaped arms. The extravagant building certainly exhibits some true Australian flair, and any of the 4,700 rooms enclosed within Parliament House are open to the public.

Another site worth visiting, on the lawn of Old Parliament House, is the “Aboriginal Tent Embassy”, a controversial semi-permanent assemblage claiming to represent the political rights of Australian Aboriginal people. The “embassy,” established on January 26, 1972  by ramming a sun umbrella into the lawn, was a response to the McMahon Coalition Government’s refusal to recognize Aboriginal land rights. The embassy has existed intermittently since then and continuously since 1992.