Canberra - Canberra visitor guide showing a virtual tour of 'Canberra' linked to an interactive map with local and travel information. 360° panoramas from Australian Capital Territory.

Canberra is the capital city of 102,Australia and is in the . It has a population of about Australian Capital Territory (ACT), surrounded by New South Wales. The population of Canberra is about 325,000 people, it is about 150 km inland from the Pacific Ocean on the eastern side of Australia and 570m above sea level. Canberra is now a major tourist destination in Australia, mostly filled with government agencies and supporting industries.

Canberra is now an important destination in Australia. This is not only for the government agencies, embassies and commissions, but also because Canberra contains many major Australian cultural organisations and important cultural landmarks. Among the important tourist attractions in Canberra are the Australian War Memorial, the National Gallery of Australia, the High Court, Parliament House, Old Parliament House, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the National Library of Australia and Lake Burley Griffin.

The Canberra region has long been home to the Ngunnawal Aboriginal people. Archaeological evidence for them dates back about 21,000 years, with significant sites and rock paintings around Birrigai Rock Shelter at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, in Namadgi National Park and in other places throughout the ACT. After the arrival of the Europeans the numbers of Aborigines declined.

Canberra owes its prominence entirely due to its designation as the Australian capital. After 1st January 1901, when Australia declared itself to be a Commonwealth, the new constitution stated that the seat of goverment was to be in 'New South Wales, and be distant not less than one hundred miles from Sydney'. It took another 7 years to finally decide where this seat should be, with Canberra being selected out of 11 proposed sites.

Attempts were made to site the capital at Dalgety in 1904, but the NSW government opposed this and did not release the land to the Commonwealth. In 1908 the Yass-Camberra site was proposed by the House of Representatives along with 5 other nominations ((Armidale, Dalgety, Dalgety-Tooma, Lyndhurst and Tumut). Eventually, after breaking a deadlock, Canberra was selected over Tumut and on 14 December 1908 the Seat of Government 1908 received Royal Assent which repealed the 1904 Act.

In January 1911 the Federal Capital Territory was created with NSW ceding 2,360 square kilometers of land including the seaport of Jervis Bay. This was followed by a design competition for Canberra, which was launched in April 1911 and won by Walter Burley Griffin in 1912. The first part of construction in Canberra began in March 1913 when Governor-General Lord Denman, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, Minister for Home Affairs King O'Malley and Attorney-General William Hughes lay a foundation stone of the new city on Capitol Hill. At the time Lady Denman announced that the capital would be known as 'Canberra'. In 1938 the Federal Capital Territory was renamed to Australian Capital Territory, and it became a self governing territory in 1989.

Canberra is 281 kilometres from Sydney and 660 kilometres from Melbourne.