How lucky are we to live in Canberra?

The trees are turning, but we're still in daylight saving time. Mornings and evenings are cool but, this year at least, the days are still warm and pleasant.

Christmas and the long summer holidays are now far enough in the distance that the rear-view mirror no longer taunts.

Routines are set, everyone's back at work and school, traffic is finally being predictable, and the year is under way.

And with Easter around the corner, things don't feel quite so dire that we need to start planning for winter getaways, or wishing (ever-so-briefly) we lived somewhere else.

Which makes it the best time to stop, briefly, and celebrate this city, and how lucky we are to live here.

Did the early founders of modern-day Canberra know, when choosing the date of the official naming ceremony for the new national capital, it would forever be marked at the very best time of year?

Back then, there were hardly any trees to turn, and not much to mark the seasons, which, thanks to the scrappy, windswept and overgrazed landscape, ran generally from "hot and windy" to "cold and inhospitable".

While those attending the ceremony were enthusiastic, the rest of the country was dubious, and would remain so for several decades.

Naming the capital was, therefore, an act of faith, and one that we see, again and again, has paid off.

So when the Premier of Queensland declared Canberra to be an "awful place" last month, it's hard to fathom what he was referring to, other than its relative distance from Brisbane and the fact it has four distinct seasons, instead of two mildly different ones.

It seems so retro, so last century, to criticise Canberra, especially from so far away.

Comments on the story - for the comments were so outlandish they made it onto our front page - ranged from laconic good-on-yous to furious disagreement, with plenty of readers jumping to defend our city with all the vigour we've come to expect from our growing population.

But there's less and less need as the years roll on, as the city has grown into its identity.

Not only the now-confirmed home of the AIS, we're also the "cool little capital", a cultural and culinary jewel that grows on you like the fine cold-region wines that have put us on the map well before Braddon experienced it renaissance in the first part of the century.

The happenings up at Parliament House, meanwhile, continue to have minimal direct effect on the daily lives of the city's year-round inhabitants, a fact that often flummoxes outsiders.

Perhaps this is what Mr Miles of Queensland was referring to - the inescapable fact that the only real excuse he has to come here is for work.

Nothing takes the shine off a city like a work-only trip.

Which is why he should have torn himself away from his dreary tropical desk and flown down here on this very day, to raise a glass to the city that, most of the time, performs its role - seat of government, centre of a peaceful and functioning democracy - with so little fuss. Or, at least, to watch the balloons float over the lake at sunrise.

We can forgive him for his silliness, because we Canberrans aren't offended that he, or anyone else, thinks it's "awful" down here - we know better than to play up to the cliches.

And we also know how to appreciate how lucky we are, at a time when so many in the world are suffering.