Postcards from Canberra

Canberra is a purpose built city for diplomats and government officials and academic types. As a consequence, it is filled with smooth concrete and glass facades and orderly, organised and systematically arranged streets. But, those neat streets are lined with big shiny gum trees that twist and hang and arrange themselves as they please over pavements, the mountains are still visible in the distance, behind concrete apartment blocks, and the birds chatter noisily to themselves just as loudly here as they do in the bush. And the sunsets, God, the sunsets. They drip like paintings across the sky, melting like butter on your tongue and making your insides glow.