A teen getaway game-changer: Canberra’s hip new personality

The transformation of Canberra over the years from a daggy place teenagers were forced to visit for school excursions to a hip destination brimming with cool hotels and eateries means teens like mine now love visiting the capital, writes Andrew Mevissen.

And the beauty of Canberra, with its galleries, museums and national institutions, means teens can have fun and learn at the same time.

The lynchpin to ensure your teenagers enjoy Canberra is to organise a fun place to stay. At East Hotel Jaspar (16) and her friend get busy snapchatting this arty, on-trend, left-of-centre hotel as soon as we enter the foyer with its rows of free hire bikes, jars of free jaffas, freckles and jellybeans – and free Wi-Fi of course! Close to Parliament House (which, we learn, is Australia’s largest building with the largest Australian flag in the country), East boasts spacious, interconnecting apartments and a list of things teens can do in Canberra.

Number one for most teens is eating. So after settling in, we wander downstairs to East’s new restaurant, Joe’s, a buzzing Italian-flavoured eatery specialising in share plates. An added bonus is the late noon checkout (perfect for hard-to-wake under 18s) and the fact that teens can raid the room mini-bar without breaking the bank; chocolate bars and soft drinks are reasonably priced.

Some good old-fashioned thrill seeking

On Saturday we give the hotel’s free retro bikes a whirl around Lake Burley Griffin, with the hill-free bike track also easy and whinge-free. However, we speed things up at our next destination, Power Kart Raceway, one of the biggest indoor go-karting centres in Australia. Perfect for frosty ACT winter days, the huge complex boasts a 320-metre-long track of F1-style circuit that begs to be conquered by daredevil, speed-hungry teens. In fact my leadfoot 16-year-old daughter is just two seconds slower than me on our fastest laps – a sobering thought, as I’m currently teaching her to drive in real cars! Power Kart Raceway also offers an indoor, glow-in-the-dark Jungle Golf course packed with fun obstacles.

Animal encounters and retail therapy

Deciding to channel our inner zookeeper, we join the Walk on the Wild Side tour at the National Zoo & Aquarium where we pet a cheetah, have morning tea with a cougar and hand feed a shark. What could get better than that? Well, how about feeding pears to a sun bear and beef to a tiger with tongs! The two-hour behind-the-scenes Zooventure Tour for over-12s gives visitors the chance to get cosy with lions, otters, brown bears and giraffes, not to mention the friendly python.

Dominating the skyline is the mountain-top Telstra Tower. In search of the perfect Instagram shot, we ascend its lookout to see Canberra’s vast greenery unfold before us. And, because we all see it so often on telly, we pop our heads inside the cavernous halls of Parliament House to check out where all our taxes go. Just down the hill is Old Parliament House, which now serves as the Museum of Australian Democracy and is a great place for all ages to learn how the Aussie political system works (or is supposed to work). Seeing the frozen-in-time office suites once occupied by our nation’s leaders is simply fascinating. Well, for me at least, but the girls eventually said it was time for retail therapy so we hit the Old Bus Depot Markets, a quirky collection of stalls inside an industrial building. With (a little) money left to spend we head to the brand-name hub of the Canberra Centre where we further boost the city’s economy.

Arts, crafts and trendy eats

We awake on Sunday with the girls itching to get creative at the Canberra Glassworks, where over-14s can shape molten glass into paperweights and tumblers. The art theme continues at the National Gallery of Australia where, sure, there are a lot of exhibits teenagers will find boring, but there are also plenty which challenge and intrigue.

Stomachs again rumble, so we head to Canberra’s food trucks at the über-cool urban village of The Hamlet in Braddon.

Seasonally, there are great scheduled activities for teens at the Australian National Botanic Gardens. In warmer months, the Sunset Cinema is a must-do. With so much to see and do, who said Canberra was anything but the Capital of Cool?

This article originally appeared in Holidays with Kids magazine. To subscribe to the latest issue, click here.

All images © Andrew Mevissen