You can see Melbourne from Mars?
I’ve got good eyesight.
Canberra
I love precious opal, so Coober Pedy pops into my mind first.
Adelaide, because I’ve been there more times than other non-Sydney cities.
My second thought was the wonderful town of Tittybong, because heh. Tittybong.
Perth, because it’s the Cape Town of Australia…
It was; and I recently re-read that story, so that would be one reason for Ballarat to come to mind. It’s also the setting for The Doctor Blake Mysteries, which I’ve been watching lately. Plus, there’s a pub hereabouts called “The Ballarat” which is a bit of a local landmark, so there’s that, too.
But what brought it to mind last night was watching Strictly Come Dancing. My wife commented on Craig Revel Horwood’s peculiarly affected pronunciation of some words, and I tried to kid her it was his native Ballarat accent coming through.
Don’t think she bought it.
Just to show off: Broken Hill (big mining centre, in the “mid-east” but a long way inland).
Townsville because of the Cowboys.
And as for Canberra…
(d&r)
Fremantle is really part of Perth these days- really like a big suburb. I was there in about 1982 before the America’s Cup win and it was a run down old port. Now it is a very expensive place to buy property.
I nominated Brisbane as I now live here. Perth would have been second- one of the most isolated capital cities in the world.
Interesting, I went off wiki’s list of Aussie cities by population. Don’t quite know the difference between Canberra and Australian Capital territory, I assume it’s similar to the city of Washington D.C. and the District of Colombia kinda relationship?
Canberra is the city, ACT is really a piece of land carved out to ensure that neither NSW or Victoria were seen as predominant.
Both Canberra and the ACT are equally boring.
I said Perth, I think because I used to know a boy from there.
Coober Pedy, I’ve seen Priscilla, queen of the desert far too many times
Perth, probably because I live not too far away from the original one, and one of my friends lives in the Australian version.
Me too! Melbourne, Florida, that is. Which also explains my vote.
Ha, exactly the same for me. I thought “Perth” and then almost instantly “Why Perth and not Melbourne? Isn’t Melbourne bigger?”
The poll results make sense, at least from my perspective, Melbourne should be more well known. I have colleagues working there, they’d be my only regular contacts with Australians. But Perth keeps popping up in the posts. Maybe it is the one syllable thing Tomba mentioned.
There are similarities up to a point. However:
(1) The ACT is much larger in area than DC, and the majority of its area is rural. There’s no rural land in DC, which is surrounded on all sides by urban counties and cities of Maryland and Virginia.
(2) Washington DC is incorporated as a city, with a city council and a mayor, even though it covers the same area as DC. Canberra is not incorporated as a city, since there are no local government areas in the ACT.
(3) The ACT has voting representatives in the Australian Senate and House of Representatives. DC has taxation without representation.
(4) DC has a deep-water port and a navy base. ACT does not, but there is the separate Jervis Bay Territory which does have a navy base.
(5) There’s no airport in DC, though Washington National (DCA) is next to its boundary on the other side of the Potomac in Virginia. Canberra Airport is inside te ACT.