The capital of Australia is Canberra and it’s located within the Australian Capital Territory just like the capital of the US is Washington in the District of Columbia. Neither has any seperate goverment from it’s territory/district. We fregently refer to Washington as simply “DC” do Australians refer to Canberra as “ACT”? Do they say each letter of just “act”?
When we mean “The capital” we say “Canberra” - when we’re talking about the area it’s in, we say “the A.C .T.”
I agree with Shakester. And it’s always ‘the ACT’. Never just ‘ACT’ on its own.
Generally just Canberra when referring to the capital city in the news. The news will say “In Canberra…” meaning in federal politics.
More specialised there are references to “The Hill” when refering to parliament house and the bastards within (although this might only be a local thing), as parliament house is basically on/in a big mound of dirt in a big roundabout. The ACT is very small and pretty much contains only canberra, so is only referred to entirely out of staters in the most general cases, such as “I say chaps, I hear in the ACT we can purchase all the legal fireworks and pornograph our hearts desire. Lest make a weekend of it shall we!”
As indicted, it’s usually refered to a Canberra because there is not ambiguity while the territory is “the” ACT.
Of more significance to the OP is that the ACT was granted self governance in 1988.
I had always understood that the whole “DC” thing was because there are two different Washingtons - Washington the state, and Washington the city - and the DC helped differentiate them.
There’s only one Canberra. No ambiguity. So those of us outside the place can follow our natural tendency to completely forget that there IS such a place as the ACT…
A pornograph - that’s the thing you play your pornography on, right?
I’ve now got this vision of someone in a 1920s waistcoat and shirt, with a bowler hat and his trousers around his ankles hand-winding a Victrola-style pornograph.
For the record, “the Hill” is a Canberra-only localism.
I’ve frequently heard the expression used here in Adelaide.
Hehe. Well they did copy the porno videos here for mail orders back in the vhs days. I suppose the copy machine they use could have been named that.
As for ‘the hill’, Im starting think it might be an ABC news thing, and thats why it has been heard in other places.
It could be a press gallery thing. But I watch a lot of ABC news and current affairs and the term’s unfamiliar to me.
I played for the ACT in the first game they won in the Australian Baseball Championships. I should try to find a picture of the team - the uniforms have to be the most hideous in the history of competitive sports.
Does that include the 1994 Socceroo guernsey?
Besides, the ACT has a proud history of godawful sporting outfits. Do I need to remind anyone of the season that Merv Hughes played for the Canberra Comets? In shorts?
I can’t find a picture - probably because safesearch is on - but if anyone does could they please burn the internet?
I certainly think of it as an ABCism.
Incidentally, it’s a two syllable word, Can-bra.
The Australians I know tend to say it as “Cam-Bra.”
The District of Columbia predates what became known as Washington state by about 60 years. I can’t say what the District of Columbia was casually known as in the early 19th century but there was a clear distinction between the capitol of Washington and the District itself so it’s safe to say that the territory was referred to in some way distinctly from Washington. At this point it’s difficult to say when “DC” became predominant and if that coincided with the founding of the state but it probably started when District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 made Washington and DC officially one and the same. I can say that very few people are thinking about differentiating between the state and capitol when they say “DC”. Washington DC is just “DC” to almost everyone in the same way that Los Angeles is “LA”, and American politics is “Washington” in the same way the entertainment biz is “Hollywood”.
Long story short, the “DC” does distinguish the two places but that isn’t generally part of the thought process when you use the term.
Oh yeah, we’ve got a “the Hill” too. Get your own euphemisms!
For most of the early history of the U.S., up to and including the Civil War from my reading, the national capital was referred to as “Washington City” or, less frequently, “the Federal City.” Don’t know when those went out of fashion.
As Omniscient says, DC and Washington DC are legally the same thing. The District is governed by the City Council, and the same territory also carries out the same functions that are carried out in most of the states by counties, although it’s not called a county.
The City of Canberra and the ACT are distinct territories, since Canberra only occupies the urban part of the ACT. However, Canberra is not incorporated as a city – there is no Mayor (or Lord Mayor) of Canberra, and there’s no city council. Local government services in the ACT are provided by the ACT Government.
I spoke to a friend who’s an ex-Lib staffer. He says that they never called it “the Hill”, and that he hadn’t heard that term before. The names he could remember were:
- the Traffic Cone
- the Nature Strip
- Mt Howard
- the Flagpole
- F***nugget Central (apparently a popular term among Costello’s staff)
He also told me that a certain homosexual transvestite from the Adelaide hills used to call the place the Magic Roundabout.
Verbally specifying “Washington DC” or “Washington State” certainly does help avoid ambiguity. But there is another area which no one in this thread has yet touched on, and that concerns how to address one’s mail/post.
The standard way to address a letter in the US includes the city, state, and zip code. So for example, one would write “Washington, DC 20395”, having the name (or abbreviation) of the district where the state would normally be.
My understanding is that in Australia, one writes the city, postal code, and state; for example, “Melbourne 3182, Victoria”. How would one write an address in Canberra? My guess is something like “Canberra 2601, ACT”. Surely it would not be “Canberra 2601, The ACT”, right? Or might you leave off the state reference entirely?