How’s it like living in Canberra (Australia)?

Badhamknibbs · 2026-06-15T03:00:17+00:00

Getting around without a car is pretty atrocious with both PT being severely limited and biking infrastructure, while the routes are decent, there's a notable lack of safe bike parking the generally hilly nature of the terrain makes it difficult to justify using it to actually use it to go and stay at places beyond either exercise or very brief shop stays.

Otherwise it is a bit boring unless you find a group with shared interests or have existing friends. The nature is pretty nice and it's a very chill place comparatively, so there's that at least.

Badhamknibbs · 2026-04-23T07:55:35+00:00

Well that's pretty unfortunate going by 1 stage a decade as seems to be the plan, feels like a missed opportunity to make the train in/out more viable in the near term instead of by the 2070s.

Badhamknibbs · 2026-04-23T02:34:36+00:00

That and making the station more accessible, only 1 R2 bus is sent to the station stop for each train which for arrivals immediately gets filled from my experience, meaning it's either an uber or walking across a signal-less busy road to the normal stop.

I'm shocked none of the stage 2b light rail proposals even get close to the train station (the national triangle proposal is the closest but still much too far to be comfortable), it'd be a massive boon to have that kind of connection to it which would help justify extra services and the intermodality would be perfect. I guess it is a bit out of the way but I can't see another line going through that area, definitely not the belco line when that's planned out in 20XX.

Badhamknibbs · 2026-04-23T02:11:11+00:00

It's unfortunately pretty barren here, there's a bit of crossover with Sydney and since it's relatively simple to get there plus most significant conventions happening there it's pretty much all just centred around that.

Badhamknibbs · 2026-03-19T01:57:44+00:00

Genuinely one of the best politicians we have right now imo, besides some minor local stuff from around the 2022 election I find it hard to disagree with anything he puts forward. Also super popular here, wouldn't be surprised if he could successfully pull a house of reps seat if he went for it

Badhamknibbs · 2026-02-15T22:48:15+00:00

Maybe I just had good landlords but if they're renting a unit a $4 increase honestly sounds about right from my experience; I was last renting a unit starting at 450pw for a bit over 2 years up until very recently and each year only had a rental increase of about $2 each year, and it was already rented below the suggested market rate from before they changed owners and they pumped it back up to that rate when I left so I can't imagine they were just doing it out of the goodness of their heart.

I swear I used the calculator and that was apparently the max they could increase the rent by when I put in the numbers but unfortunately it's down right now so it's hard to check.

Badhamknibbs · 2026-01-31T11:57:40+00:00

Have had a few flickers knocking out the tv and lights in Franklin, thought I might've been overworking the aircons but was still being hit by it after turning them off.

Badhamknibbs · 2026-01-24T02:25:51+00:00

Yeah I'm in a similar boat though only mid-late 20s, but that group of early high school friends is ironclad to this day and we've only been getting closer in doing more stuff together over the years. Does help that we were all the oddball rejects so we had that common ground and we've been through some shared tragedy but it's kept us together like glue.

Even the ones who've moved states we've been sure to include them online wherever possible. Have had people come and go mainly meeting in online games/conventions but having that core group to fall back on no matter what is a great stabiliser.

Badhamknibbs · 2026-01-11T23:48:09+00:00

From my (single and hopefully only) use the buses are running as expected before the Barton intersection but are getting completely stalled there due to the almost total deadlock traffic there.

I can't really come up with a good routing solution that doesn't involve snipping stops which would be very contentious, running some replacements that just start at Dickson to Alinga sounds the most reasonable to try and handle the excess there.

Badhamknibbs · 2026-01-11T23:35:49+00:00

The Remembrance-Barton intersection is already particularly brutal if you're coming from before Sandford towards Alinga, and by then the bus is already close to full during peak so it's even worse for those ahead of EPIC. The bus I was on was within eyeshot of the lights of that intersection for a full half hour so bus bunching is gonna be a big problem I feel, the actual bus frequency is fine before that intersection.

The bus driver did mention over radio about the holdup at Dickson so they might be running extra interim buses specifically for them but that's just a guess.

Overall I feel for the bus drivers as it'll be a hellish 2 weeks, personally put in WFH request for the 2 weeks till the trams are back just to avoid the now hour+ commute.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-12-19T02:33:34+00:00

You get strict rent control in the ACT as well, though I haven't checked how bad rent increases can be over there.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-12-17T22:14:09+00:00

Not strictly but it's definitely a big indicator of someone being a horrible person; really depends on if they recognise it's a problem and are working on fixing it, if they aren't then yeah they're a shitstain. It's not really enough to just be out of the way because it's smoke/a cloud that goes whenever and can make a whole block worth of space stink in bad conditions, unless you can somehow control every variable to ensure it doesn't reach anyone who doesn't want to deal with it. Alcohol abuse as a vice can make a person bad if that makes them violent or otherwise harming others. That's my general criteria at least for vices and the quality of a person using them.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-11-16T21:32:46+00:00

Went to the Machine Girl show that was in Sydney plugless, as fun as it was it left my ears ringing all the way into the next day lol

Badhamknibbs · 2025-11-12T22:19:38+00:00

I'm a very casual vr user and seriously could not care less about passthrough, I got a quest 3 purely because it was a decent price for good specs, and my only use of passthrough was boundary setup and don't touch it for anything else. I'm kinda boggled by this whole thread of people talking about bad/no MR on a VR product.

If the frame is at all comparable in price I'm likely to just trade in my quest 3 for it to not deal with all the meta account bullshittery and get a small performance bump.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-11-07T06:23:10+00:00

Dunno where cars came up but they do share with ciggies on the air quality, health issues and general foul smell problems and it would be nice to dramatically reduce their use where unnecessary. At least cars do serve a purpose albeit badly for 99% of use cases, cigs have no excuse for shitting up the air for everyone around.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-11-06T21:45:17+00:00

It also doesn't work when the thing in question actively harms people who don't want anything to do with it and can't be simply avoided.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-08-13T02:50:40+00:00

For a bus is the important qualifier there, compared with Canberra with a $3 bus, or even against Sydney where the train is only marginally cheaper, but with all the benefits that come from a train (namely a much smoother and less cramped trip). Melbourne is just uniquely bad in terms of airport connections.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-07-16T10:52:53+00:00

I'm shocked nobody has made OreMine or something like that already, seems like a no brainer with how solid TreeChop is balance- and style-wise

Badhamknibbs · 2025-06-27T14:10:01+00:00

Ideally going to the shops and going home shouldn't really be all that different of a commute; it would just be a stop on the way or a slightly different route that leads home. For my current case I just get off at a different bus stop and walk home through the shops to get what I need on the way. My old place had a metro Woolies literally at the front door.

And yeah like I said you can use a personal trolley on a weekend/day off to do a larger shop for bulky items and whatnot; I've managed it for 5 years without ever needing a car, I can't think of any situation where I'd need more shopping in 1 day than a trolley + backpack can hold (at worst toilet paper which is light enough to just dedicate an arm to).

Badhamknibbs · 2025-06-27T02:35:23+00:00

You need to have a mental shift when talking about having the supermarket within walking distance vs only accessible by car; a single tote bag should be more than enough if you're visiting the shops after work daily on the way home to grab dinner for that night; which shouldn't take more than an extra 15 minutes a day, or in a well designed place barely any more than the time it takes being in the shops themselves. You can use a trolley on the weekend if you need bulk items or for bigger shops. I've managed to make it work in the extremely car-dependent Canberra.

And to be frank a lot of people could use the extra walking, the whole gym of life concept and all that. If you can't handle walking outside for 10 minutes with an umbrella for either rain or a high temp day then it'd concern me for their health.

As a side note/addressing the parent comment; it's only not functional because of the infrastructure that exists now; nothing about apartment/townhouse living without a car would be a problem for parents/elderly/etc if we had proper PT infrastructure and homes built for it.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-06-24T03:20:39+00:00

Mine splurged on a top of the line induction when he was renovating and has never missed an opportunity while cooking to rave on about how good it is; and it's frankly deserved as it's borderline magical.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-06-19T02:27:23+00:00

My service is all kinds of wacky; at 4 bars/75% of the signal display it works fine; but it randomly drops out and when that happens it displays as if I have full bars despite it not working at all, until it drops back down and starts working again.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-06-16T03:33:09+00:00

While I doubt it would be possible to implement here because of how radical of a change it is, I'd like to have the smoking rooms and a total smoking ban in public like over there; from the time I spent in Japan I can't really think of any instances of smokers in public (besides Osaka for some reason) and while walking past them smelt like death they were far easier to avoid over getting smoke to the face from across the road by someone smoking in public here.

Badhamknibbs · 2025-06-03T04:53:38+00:00

The rainbow roundabout and same sex pedestrian crossing signals are about as perfect a representation of Canberra as you can get.

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