Canberra may have been languishing through a mid-summer heatwave, but it is never too early to start thinking about winter. Specifically, about how to change the city's oft-bemoaned title as the country's coldest city into a selling point.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
The capital wants to be seen as "confident, bold and ready", but to much of the rest of Australia, it is also cold, bleak and rugged up.
And this, says National Gallery director Ron Radford, is our own fault. We cannot change the weather, but we can change the way other people see it.
Dr Radford, who accepted a major award at the Canberra and Capital Region Tourism Awards last month, said the capitol should turn its notoriously chilly winters into a virtue not a reason to stay away.
He cited Melbourne and Hobart as two other notably cold cities that had invested in tourism campaigns for the winter months.
"Our winters are much milder and more fantastic than either Hobart or Melbourne, and I can say that as a Melbourne person,'' he said.
The gallery had stepped up to the mark during the centenary year by staging a major winter exhibition - Turner from the Tate, an ambitious undertaking as it came hot on the heels of the summer blockbuster of works by Toulouse-Lautrec.
But while the show had been successful, with about 150,000 visitors coming through the doors, the numbers would have been much higher if it had been on in the summer he said.
Or, if winter in Canberra could be seen as an event in itself, rather than a drawback.
Dr Radford pointed out that the recent Canberra branding campaign made no mention of winter.
"If people were used to coming to Canberra in winter it would get even more people through," he said.
ACT minister for tourism Andrew Barr agreed that Canberra needed to capitalise on the cold, rather than shrug it off.
"Certainly we've been focused on lifting that winter period," he said. "Our tourism numbers have been about 2 million domestic overnight visitors a year, but with spring and autumn being stronger those two seasons generate more than 50 per cent of the 2 million."
Mr Barr said the ACT government's special events fund, of which the gallery had been a major beneficiary in the past, had been set up partly to encourage more tourists during the traditional yearly slumps in summer and winter. Through the fund, the ACT government had put $500,000 towards the national marketing campaign for the Turner show, which ran from June to September this year.
And, apart from events such as the August Fireside Festival, which mainly focused on regional wineries and restaurants or hotels with fireplaces, and the recent advent of an outdoor ice-skating rink in Civic, Mr Barr agreed that it was time to lift Canberra's game once winter set in.
But he said it was important to be authentic. "There's no point trying to sell an experience different from what you're going to offer, or from the reality, so we have to make a virtue of the fact and have a point of difference, that yes, we have a winter, and four distinct seasons."
He said there had been a focus in recent years on trying to "capture" some of the traffic heading through the capital en route to the snowfields each year.
But on this point, Dr Radford disagreed.
"I don't think that will do it because people are so anxious to get to the snow quickly and get back,'' he said.
''It has to be a special trip to Canberra in winter, but we have to somehow talk up Canberra's winters as being bright and crisp."
