Dissent and the Griffins’ Canberra | Canberra Modern Coach Tour
Canberra Modern
14 November 2026
Day + Time | Saturday | 9.30am-3.30pm | Lunch included
Location | Rear carpark, National Archives of Australia, Kings Avenue, Parkes ACT 2600
Entry | General Admission $67 | Bookings Essential
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Canberra Modern’s coach tour will take you to significant sights around Canberra, some well-known and others hidden in plain sight.
The Griffin’s original vision for Canberra was modern from its inception by rejecting rigid planning traditions, envisioning a city shaped by organic geometry, integrating landscape and embodying democratic ideals. It is a city designed to embrace creative freedom and dissent. We experience the enduring qualities of the Griffin’s internationally significant 1912 plan for Canberra. To see the Griffin’s plan for the national capital, through the lens of Marion Mahony Griffin’s beautiful illustrations, and to learn about the frustration that Walter Burley Griffin felt while trying to implement their winning design for Canberra is illuminating.
Participants will view the city from vantage points around the central national area of Canberra, to hidden sites like the historic 1913 Cork Oak plantation, General Bridges Grave and the 1930s Incinerator inside the Royal Canberra Golf Club.
This tour is led by Canberra Modern.
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Through event-based advocacy and engagement with the community, Canberra Modern promotes and celebrates an appreciation of Canberra’s significant twentieth century places and spaces. These places make an irreplaceable contribution to Canberra’s historic urban and designed cultural landscape.
Canberra Modern’s events aim to increase awareness of Canberra’s modernist character as a uniquely designed national capital with significant features, from modernist architectural gems to historic trees lining planned streetscapes and a setting of natural hills and open space.
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Proudly supported by Canberra Modern
Images | View of Ethos sculpture in Canberra’s Civic Square | View of Parliament House from Mount Ainslie 1970 | Photos courtesy of Canberra Modern