By Pat Nevan

Not a still from Mad Max, but Australia’s Capital Canberra

Australia is an amazing continent full of an astonishing range of natural wonders and amazing places to visit. Unfortunately exactly none of these sights are visible between our hometown of Bendigo and the nation’s Capital of Canberra. The scenery ranges from flat and dull to slightly less flat and dull. If you are unfortunate enough to make the trip on a regular basis, the tedium is broken up by desultory conversations about what was or wasn’t burned down in bushfires from previous years, but that’s about it.

Joel McGrath and I made the trip up leaving at 11 arriving at 5:30pm and other than forgetting to bring a sacrifice for the submarine shrine (and almost certainly cursing myself for the year ahead), that’s about all there is to say about that. Canberra is as disappointing as ever, living up to its reputation as the nation’s Taint. The local governing body is in the middle of something of a crime and budget crisi, which you could tell by theworn-out street signs, badly maintained parks and bright new signs promising government action on crime. Whoever said that governments make the most noise about the things they are doing the least about knew their stuff. 

View from the campground 3km from the seat of the Australian Government, suck it Washington DC

Anyways the point of a visit to Canberra is to see as little of the place as possible. We arrived at the campground, which is adjacent to the venue, and I immediately noticed some unwelcome changes. In previous years the down at heel facility was largely inhabited by retirees and travelers but with a cost of living crisis and inflationary pressures, there was an unwelcome abundance of middle class families enjoying a cheap holiday which are exactly the sort of people we are looking to avoid on a gaming weekend.

Seriously a visit to Canberra is already bad enough, but the lads come here to avoid the happy sounds of children at play and the disapproving frowns of neighbors who aren’t too fond of loud jokes about sausages. Anyways after we got settled in the general consensus was fuck them and pending some form of confrontation with the notoriously lax camp authorities, they can have their weekend ruined.

I’m writing this at a picnic table 100 meters away and the Binek’s braying laugh is carrying through in a way that would delight any sound engineer and the Captain hasn’t even arrived yet. Cancon is all set up, the first round pairings are good to go. Personally I’m tipping a redraw so I’m not getting carried away. This diary will ramp up tomorrow, as we start rolling dice and sinking piss. A daily diary is going to be an interesting experiment, that’s for sure.

Aaron McHorus left, Joel Graham right, probably worse places on earth to be

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