To disparage Canberra is every non-Canberran Australian's birthright. To many Sydneysiders and Melburnians, the bush capital, seemingly custom built for cars and the public servants they contain, is not a proper city. As with Washington, what goes on there has not helped the city's image and "Canberra" has become shorthand both for government, and for the kind of self-referential political sausage-making which thwarts true progress. During my visits to 'our nation's capital' I've often wondered if the city was the result of a scaling error; there is a weird discrepancy between what your brain envisages when looking at a map of the city and reality. All those circles which one might imagine to be urban boulevards turn out to be dusty suburban streets, their radii too large to be perceived, yet just curved enough to get the visitor well lost.