Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia.

Australia's leaders meet here to make laws. The city has a big lake and parks.

Canberra is the capital of Australia. It is home to Parliament House, where the country's members of parliament meet to make decisions for the nation. The city lies inland, about 578 meters above sea level, in its own territory, the Australian Capital Territory.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated that 489,700 people lived in the Australian Capital Territory on 31 March 2026, about 6,200 more than a year before. The Ngunnawal people are recognized as the traditional custodians of the land.

Canberra is the seat of the Parliament of Australia and lies in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), inland at about 578 m. The ACT government's tourism site acknowledges the Ngunnawal people as the traditional custodians of the ACT.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics' estimated resident population for the ACT was 489,700 at 31 March 2026, up 6,200 (1.3%) in a year. For Canberra in 2024–25, the ABS reported that net overseas migration (4,800) and natural increase (2,900) added people while net internal migration took away 1,500; the territory's center of population lay in Lake Burley Griffin, south of Black Mountain.

Parliament House is built inside a hill. Grass grows on its roof, and visitors can walk on it!

A tall flagpole with a big flag stands on top.

Parliament House sits on Capital Hill. To build it, workers dug out one million cubic meters of earth and rock, set the building into the hill, and then put the earth back on the roof and covered it with grass. Visitors can walk on the roof, which is meant to show that the people are above the government.

It opened in 1988 and has 4,500 rooms. A flag mast 81 meters tall marks its center, and the Australian flag flying from it is about the size of the side of a double-decker bus.

The design for Parliament House, by Mitchell/Giurgola and Thorp Architects, was chosen from 329 entries in an international competition. Building began in 1980, and Queen Elizabeth II officially opened it in 1988; it cost $1.1 billion. Two curved walls, each 460 m long, divide it into four main areas and separate the Senate from the House of Representatives, reflecting Australia's two-chamber parliament.

One million cubic meters of earth and rock were removed so the building could sit inside Capital Hill; the earth was then returned to the roof and grassed to recreate the hill's shape. The 81 m stainless-steel flag mast marks the center of the building. It replaced Provisional (Old) Parliament House, about 300 m away, which opened in 1927 for a planned 50 years and by the 1980s held 3,000 people in space designed for around 300.

Canberra has a light rail train. It runs on tracks through the streets.

It carries people from the city center to the north.

Canberra's light rail opened on 20 April 2019. The first line runs 12 kilometers from Alinga Street in the city center north to Gungahlin, with 13 stops. More than one million passengers rode it in its first three months.

Plans for a second stage take the line south across Lake Burley Griffin and around the parliament area to Woden.

Stage 1 of Canberra's light rail, 12 km with 13 stops from Alinga Street in the city centre to Gungahlin, opened on 20 April 2019 and carried more than a million passengers in its first three months. The ACT light rail master plan, released in 2015, included both stage 1 and stage 2.

Stage 2, approved by the federal government in February 2021, was described by Railway Technology that year as a 10.7 km extension with 12 new stops: stage 2A, 1.7 km from Alinga Street to Commonwealth Park, and stage 2B, about 9 km across Lake Burley Griffin and through the Parliamentary Triangle to Woden, planned to run without overhead wires through the Triangle.

The lake in Canberra was made by people. They built a wall across a river, and the water filled up the lake.

Lake Burley Griffin is not a natural lake. In September 1960 work began on Scrivener Dam across the Molonglo River. The dam was finished about three years later, and it took roughly a year for the lake to fill.

Prime Minister Robert Menzies opened the lake in October 1964, with fireworks over the water that night. It was named after Walter Burley Griffin, whose plan had put a lake at the city's center. The lake covers about 7 square kilometers.

The National Capital Development Commission built the lake in two stages. The first, a dam, the lake floor, two bridges, wharves, foreshore edges and over 843 ha of landscaped foreshore, was officially commemorated on 17 October 1964; later stages landscaped the foreshores, and the project won the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects' first Award in Landscape Excellence in 1986.

Scrivener Dam, begun in September 1960, holds back the Molonglo; the lake covers about 7 km² with a catchment of about 1,865 km². HerCanberra recounts that some residents questioned the cost while other parts of Australia lacked basic services, and that a suggestion to name it after Menzies was set aside because naming conventions required the person to have died; it was named after Griffin, who had died in 1937.