So what if it smells? So does Venice. Photo: Daniiielc.
One of the great Canberra lies is that Tuggeranong is the arse-end of the Territory, the favelas from which anyone who isn’t a public servant – the tradies and criminals – must come. In our gentle Canberra elitism, we hope they still manage to eke out a meaningful living down there, responsibly enjoying their two legal plants and ideally no more.
Well, thank you, we do. And what’s more, your premise is all wrong.
Canberra’s salt-and-peppering of housing ‘for all needs’ has historically resulted in a situation bizarre to any ice-bathhouse owner in Sydney’s Double Bay: that you could have Blacktown two doors down.
For example, until recently Red Hill’s ghettos shared the same local shops as the millionaires on Mugga Lane … Mugga Way? I’m never sure which is the dirt rich and which is the rich dirt. The point is Tuggeranong houses tilers, public servants and probably Albo’s mum. Tuggeranong is for all of us.
Worse, it’s a kindly snobbery that fails to appreciate Tuggeranong’s beauty. Once known as ‘nappy valley’ (we now wear undies), Tuggeranong is family-friendly brick suburbia with front gardens and colourful playgrounds and root-throttled walking paths and probably more magpie swooping than anywhere else – a KPI for a bush capital.
Wherever you are, you can – like the ancient psalmist – lift your eyes to the hills. The Brindabellas are a constant watercolour backdrop of blue and sage haze. Compare it to Belconnen, where everything is flat, including the mood. I go to a Belconnen uni but I will never study there in case I snap into a nihilist.
Tuggeranong’s town centre is a lakeside hub of red bricks and neatly planted trees and bustling little cafes. For a place that doesn’t appear on maps in ACT Government offices, it thrives exceedingly well. Even in the Tuggeranong Interchange – with its discarded goon cartons – there’s the hint of vibe and life in most directions that Woden Town Square, with its stupid colours and table tennis that requires bats from the library, doesn’t have.
The next 78 might be 40 minutes off. Ah well. Photo: Region.
Tuggeranong people are good people, friendly people. My old Tuggeranong habit is to nod and smile a g’day at people on footpaths but most of them in inner-Canberra move icily on like you’re an APS6 in the room suggesting Robodebt could prove problematic.
A few years back I spotted the neighbour running out to the garbo at Christmas with a case of beer. Does policy allow that? Tuggeranong people don’t think to ask. In Tuggeranong we might blow up mailboxes more than in Deakin, but a handwritten letter in the ruins is more likely to be about a neighbourhood barbecue than the way you parked your C-Class.
I recently had a pungent wave of Tuggeranong gratitude while aboard light rail. Forgive my Sydney metaphors, but Gungahlin is Canberra’s Wolli Creek – damn convenient, but at what cost? As the light rail drew me further into what the writer AA Gill would have called “boundless, bottomless, fathomless corporate ugliness”, I felt increasingly desperate.
My friend described it as “nauseating”. He had won a voucher to Siren Bar, an oasis in the wilderness. It had Guinness on tap, which I love, and Sky on TV, which I don’t. But Sky was unusual and I was craving unusual. Creativity with the truth is still creativity.
Tuggeranong’s favourite politician is a Liberal. Mark Parton (Parto) is wholesome, he’s eccentric, he once offered to buy us all a beer and said – before taking it back – a (now-departed) Greens candidate was “too camp for Tuggeranong”.
Tuggeranong wasn’t going to be boxed like that, not by you and not by Parto. We put them both in.
Mark Parton says the people of Brindabella can feel forgotten by the ACT Government as its town centre is “left to wither on the vine”. Photo: Thomas Lucraft.
Of course I don’t want to over-romanticise Tuggeranong. I don’t drink here and I rarely eat here. I am in fact too camp for it. I prefer, in descending order, Fitzroy, Potts Point, Braddon. Tuggeranong is ahead of the Outer North but so is Hades.
Yet I recognise it’s a good thing the light rail has the priorities it does: moving people from Gungahlin and eventually Woden, as quickly as possible. The upside of the Southside buses taking as long as they do to mournfully rattle through neglected but pleasant suburbia is that it’s all still Tuggeranong out the window.
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