You’d write:
Mr Smith
10 Smith Street
WATSON (or whatever the suburb’s name was)
ACT 26XX (the appropriate postcode for the suburb)
Australian postal addresses don’t include the city’s name. Only the suburb’s name.
What Cunctator said, except that US and Australian “suburbs” are very different beasts. To take an example, using the term “Sydney” might mean the metropolis that’s c. 160 x 140 km, the local government area that’s about 25 km square, the CBD area that’s maybe a couple of km long and about one wide, or the suburb “Sydney” that’s about eight blocks by five.
Similarly, when you think of “Canberra”, you might be thinking of a suburb in the middle of what passes for town. The main city area, for example, is in a suburb called Civic - according to Australia Post, the area seems to be called “City”.
I’d also note that 2601 sounds very much like a General Post Office Box postcode - i.e. there aren’t any houses or businesses in that postcode. That’s certainly the case for most GPO postcodes such as 2001, 3001, 4001, etc.
Finally, it’s typically “Suburb, State, Postcode”, with the state being either in full or a three-letter abbreviation. “Australian Capital Territory” would be the equivalent of putting “Victoria” on an envelope, but you’d go with “A.C.T.” in the same way that you’d usually list an address as “Getmeoutofhere VIC. 3000”.
E.T.A. that last bit might not be right - according to the Australia Post website there’s a delivery area included in 2601 - but there’s no “Canberra” in it, only the Canberra GPO.
Yeah its got that steam punk thing happening
Declan
I would make a guess that it was known as the swamp.
Declan
Pretty much - all the images are in sepia and everyone’s moving at about 1.5x speed.
[Card]“Good afternoon, my lady. I’ve come to clean the outdoor bathing fountain!”[/Card]
That said, slap-bass lines played on the honky-tonk piano just sound silly.
Thank you, Cunctator and BigNik. It sounds to me like what you’d call a “suburb”, we’d refer to as a “neighborhood”.
Yes, Australian postal addresses usually go by unincorporated areas. Within Washington DC, examples would be Georgetown and Foggy Bottom (yes, that’s the real name of an area).
Sometimes postal addresses and local government areas do not match. For example, the postcode area called “Newcastle NSW 2300” is only a small part of the City of Newcastle.
However, if you were to address a letter to:
Mr Kevin Rudd
Parliament House
Canberra ACT
it would reach his office.
And also note that the City of Newcastle (i.e. the local government area) is also a small part of the city of Newcastle.
To address Keeve, suburbs are more formally designated than American neighbourhoods - and they can actually become pretty large when you move away from the centre of a metropolitan area. There are also areas that have a neighbourhood-style “name” that doesn’t correspond to their suburb, usually for property value reasons. People prefer to live in “Moore Park” rather than the Eastern bit of Redfern, or “Kings Cross” rather than Darlinghurst - but you’re taking your chances if you stick those place-names on an envelope, especially if Australia Post is doing one of its semi-regular “let’s get anal about addresses” kicks.
Actually, many people don’t realise that the name they were using isn’t a suburb name until they stop getting mail during one of those things. About ten years ago this happened to a friend of mine who lived up the Cross.
Civic is kind of a nickname for the city/CDB, though the name presumably has some historical anchor.
People prefer saying they live in Kings Cross then Darlinghurst? Wow Kings Cross must have changed since I lived there in a youth hostel many eons ago!
New Zealand Post is much more forgiving. We have a suburb called Takapuna and another called Pakuranga. I lived in Takapuna and a relative (in Scotland) send a letter to “Pakapuna”. It went to Pakuranga and then was redirected to Takapuna. Well done NZ post.
As for Canberra, I refer to it as “NO PLACE TO BE OUTSIDE IN WINTER!”. I spent a couple of nights in a hitchhiking journey in Canberra…frigging freezing it was waking up on a bench by the big artificial lake. Canberra has to be the LEAST likable place in Oz.
Speaking as a resident of the Washington on the Pacific, I believe it’s the case that when most Americans hear an unadorned “Washington”, they think of the federal capital. You get used to calling your residence “Washington State” pretty quickly out here. And since both Washington State and Australia are mentioned in this thread, ever try asking Google Maps for directions between the two?
They didn’t go out of fashion so much as the composition of the District of Columbia changed. Prior to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 cited earlier by Omniscient, the District of Columbia was made of thee different jurisdictions, The City of Washington, the City of Georgetown, and Washington County. If you go back prior to 1846, DC also included Alexandria County which was retroceded back to Virginia and is now Arlington County, VA, and the City of Alexandria.
No, but neither has Darlo. Specifically, property prices are higher in the Cross than they are in most of the rest of Darlo - in no small part because of the proximity to the Supermarket, railway station, etc.
Canberra suffers from a very poor image. Once you get to know it, it’s actually a very likeable city, as well as a great place to live: clean, lots of parkland, lovely weather, good services.
Oh, c’mon - Canberra’s somewhere you survive for a couple of years because you have to for work and then you go somewhere else to actually live.
You can’t get around without a car, except that the roads combine the terror of Melbourne drivers and the structure of the Minoan labyrinth. It’s too cold to go outside, which is lucky because you get sunburned within moments. It’s also fortunate because there’s no reason to leave the house except to drive to Queanbeyan.
The place is absolutely sterile.
While I note that the territory government’s taken down the signs asking anyone in Civic after 6:30 to please turn the lights out when they’re finished, that didn’t suddenly make the place “liveable”.
For those offshore, imagine that Westminster was located in Milton Keynes, only that it was 300 km from civilisation. Alternately, in the US, imagine that all the governmental function was conducted on a suburban housing estate that was too far from anything to ever leave.
Can we expand upon this? I am wary of making generalisations about the standards of drivers in particular localities, and everyone has their prejudices. But I was in Melbourne last weekend and either I was dead unlucky (and I accept that is a distinct possibility) or Melbourne includes a disproportionate number of drivers who are well obnoxious. Is this a common experience?
Well, it’s always been said that if you’re caught between Martin Bryant witha a 12-gauge and a Victorian with their P-plates, getting shotgunned to death will be quicker.
I think my favourite incident was when I was on a St Kilda tram, and we were approaching someone who was double parked across the tram tracks.
The tram, pulling up behind her, rang the bell. No response.
The tram rang again. Still no response.
The tram rang once more - somewhat more insistently. The driver leaned out the window and impatiently started signalling for the tram to go around her.
Melbourne is the renowned for bad driving. They’re nowhere near as aggressive as Sydney drivers, but they’re nowhere near as competent. What’s funny is that pretty much everyone who goes to Melbourne has to comment on how bad the driving was. It usually begins with the phrase “you know, I always heard that Melbourne drivers were bad, but…”.
Personally, I think that it’s because they’ve realised that the alternative to dying in a fiery car crash is to continue living in Melbourne, and they’re just taking the saner option.
Pretty much. The climate is one of best parts, warm when it should be, and cold when you want it. Cut & paste Canberra bashing can safely be ignored.