As we prepare to celebrate Canberra Day (and reluctantly accept another public holiday), it’s worth pausing to reflect on our planned city, which actually isn’t all that well planned.

Walter Burley Griffin designed a perfectly symmetrical city with circles and radiating streets but somehow Kingston Hotel ended up in Griffith, not Kingston. You see, Canberra Avenue is not the boundary between Griffith and Kingston so “the Kingo” isn’t in Kingston.

Even Walter Burley Griffin’s best laid plans saw Parkes and Barton end up with a northside/southside identity crisis. Both of these suburbs span both sides of the lake because they were gazetted before the lake was filled.

The Boathouse restaurant is actually in Barton, a suburb on the other side of the lake. Blundells Cottage is really in Parkes, across the lake. Clear as mud. So, as you drive along Parkes Way, you’re not in Parkes but rather Acton or Reid.

Then there’s the curious planning of our shopping centres, which bear different names to the suburbs they’re in. Like Kippax, which is in Holt, Jamison in Macquarie and Cooleman Court in Weston Creek. It’s a conundrum. 

The planning of our schools is also curious. Canberra High School and Canberra College are on opposite sides of the territory. Canberra College is in Woden (not a suburb, who knew?) and Canberra High School is in Belconnen (not the suburb, but the district).

And Manuka, honey, is not a suburb. It’s a group centre spanning both Griffith and Forrest. Are you keeping up?

The biggest planning anomaly, however, is that Civic’s official name is City (also referred to as Civic Centre, City Centre, Canberra City and Canberra but they all technically mean the same thing).

If you’re still reading this, well done. Walter Burley Griffin wanted to use the name Civic Centre to reflect its civic administration area for the city (separate to the Commonweatlh Goverment area on the other side of the proposed lake).

The name Civic Centre appears in early plans for the territory but the name was never officially recognised because the Prime Minister at the time didn’t like it.

When it came to officially gazetting the name, then Prime Minister Stanley Bruce was quoted as saying “I dislike the name Civic Centre and I think a much better name can be given to the place”.

The PM refused to say Civic Centre when he opened the precinct in 1927. Instead, he stated: “We are establishing a Federal City and we must give names that are original and appropriate.”

So public servants obediently named the division “City” (hence City Hill nearby) but locals continued to call it Civic, hence Civic Pub (in Braddon). The name has stuck.

Other quirks of Canberra are two buildings that each sit in two different suburbs – a church in Deamer Crescent resides in both Richardson and Chisholm. The ACT Fire and Rescue centre on the corner of Tharwa Drive and Drakeford Drive resides in both Calwell and Conder.

Even our natural landscape is confused, with Mt Ainslie in Majura and Mt Majura in Watson.

I could go on for days about Weston Park not being in Weston, Erindale College not being in Erindale and Majura Primary School not being in Majura but life is short. Have a happy Canberra Day.