Built from scratch: the two unlikely capitals that redefined their nations

By Amy Cooper

If for you Brazil means beaches, bikinis, carnival and Copacabana, Brasilia might seem baffling. The modern capital, purpose-built 1000 kilometres away from the nearest coastline in 1960, stole the big gig from Rio de Janeiro.

Why move your government from one of the world's most bodacious, beloved cities to a patch of remote grassland? It's like dumping Giselle Bundchen for someone in accounts. But Rio was the wrong look for ambitious 1950s president Juscelino Kubitschek. He wanted his country to dominate the world stage, and this required a major vibe shift. He was thinking superpower, not samba.

You can't blame him for seizing his chance to create a city entirely from scratch. I'd love to make my own metropolis shaped like a martini glass or a teddy bear or puppies or Ryan Gosling. Being men of their time, the prez and his designers chose an aircraft shape. In the 1960s, planes were still new and cool, along with sci-fi and futurism.

And so we have Brasilia, an architecturally unique living museum centred on a long "fuselage", intersected by "wings" and dotted by weird and wonderful white concrete buildings - domes, saucers, stalks, spikes - from visionary modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer. It looks as if various UFOs have landed on the wide avenues and landscaped gardens. Think the Jetsons meets Disneyland's Tomorrowland.

Amazingly, Brasilia was built in just under five years. Single buildings have taken twice as long. (Sydney Opera House was a 14-year job.) And it really is gorgeous. On the Monumental Axis main drag, the Cathedral of Brasilia rises like a great white crown, with 16 curved columns supporting stunning blue and white stained-glass facades, all reflected in a surrounding water mirror.

Nearby, the Congress Palace's thin twin towers stretch up like an elongated H between the two chamber roofs - one a dome, the other a bowl. The National Museum looks like the top of a boiled egg emerging from the ground, and the president's Alvorada Palace is ethereally beautiful, with its stem-like columns adorning a peninsula in the artificial Lake Paranoa.

Pancake-flat Brasilia is made for cycling, or you can climb the 224m Digital TV Tower, itself a flower-inspired masterpiece, for 360s of the avant-garde vista. At 40 sq km, Lake Paranoa is nearly seven times the size of Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin, and you can boat on it all day long, admiring the JK bridge with its graceful arches, plus beaches, islands and - adding to the prevailing surreality - giant capybaras sunbathing.

Canberra's also a modern marvel, but it can't compete with the shimmy of native charisma Brasilia brings to the party. Niemeyer said his concrete curves were modelled on Rio's beautiful beach bodies. Sexy government buildings? That's an unbeatable capital asset.

By Mal Chenu

In 2014, The New York Times described Canberra as "a city with natural beauty and a decidedly hipster underbelly - that has come to shine while Melbourne and Sydney bicker about their own fabulousness".

Notwithstanding the fact that the Ngunnawal people had been hanging out there for about 20,000 years, the "new" settlement was conceived when Sydney and Melbourne finally agreed where to put it after years of bickering. It had to be at least a hundred miles from Sydney, and Melbourne would be the interim seat of government. A perfect solution that set the standard for the layers of bureaucracy to follow.

A design competition for the site in 1911 was won by American architect couple Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, who beat 136 other entrants. Construction of the grand plan began in 1913. More bureaucratic brouhahas ensued and Burley Griffin was eventually sacked in 1920. Provisional Parliament House (now Old Parliament House) was opened in 1927 and the city's centrepiece, Lake Burley Griffin was created in 1963 by the damming of the Molonglo River. Once derided as "several suburbs in search of a city" (and in more colourful ways as a synecdoche), the creation yarn is chronicled at Canberra Museum and Gallery.

Beyond the backstory, Canberra's attractions are as many and varied as lobbyists' wish lists. The Australian War Memorial is one of the finest of its kind in the world. The National Museum of Australia and National Gallery and Sculpture Garden are imaginative and poignant showcases of the country's artistic and cultural history. Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve and Namadgi National Park contain 400 Aboriginal sites, including rock art and ceremonial stone arrangements. Canberra is for kids too, and not just during Question Time. The National Zoo & Aquarium, the National Dinosaur Museum, and Questacon - The National Science and Technology Centre are all excellent preludes to an ice cream at Stripey Sundae. At Jamala Wildlife Lodge, you can even have a sleepover with giraffes and tigers and sharks, oh my!

Like a state premier, you should go to Canberra with an ambitious agenda. There is a lot to see, and an itinerary that is as well-planned as the city itself is a good idea. The New York Times also described Canberra as the "Brasilia of Australia". Nice rhyming, but the South American city-come-lately is really the Canberra of Brazil.