Nutbush City Limits: Canberra, where should our city end?

Posted on 9 September, 2026

Some causes ask you to write a submission, attend a meeting or sign a petition.  This one is asking us to dance.  And not just any dance – the Nutbush.

On Saturday 19 September, more than 350 Canberrans are being called to line up, step, kick, turn and hopefully remain vaguely in time with each other for Canberra’s Biggest Nutbush: Line Up for Our City Limits.

Yes, we are literally doing the Nutbush to promote a conversation about Canberra’s city limits. I’m not sure whether Tina Turner ever imagined her song being used to talk about urban sprawl in Canberra, but I like to think she would approve.

The idea comes from the Save Our Western Edge community campaign, and behind the fun is a deceptively simple question: as our city grows, where should it end?

The Western Edge is around 9,800 hectares of bushland stretching along the Murrumbidgee River and bordering parts of Belconnen, Molonglo Valley and Weston Creek. It includes woodlands, grasslands and river corridors and provides habitat for threatened species and other wildlife.  But its value isn’t only ecological.  The bush is part of the way we experience Canberra.

Our suburbs don’t feel entirely separate from nature because, in so many parts of Canberra, they aren’t. The bush weaves around and through them. We walk in it, ride through it, picnic in it and escape into it. It is part of the reason the description Bush Capital still feels like more than a marketing slogan.

And perhaps because the bush is always there, we sometimes take it for granted.

Canberra is growing. We need more homes, and we need to plan for a bigger population. But good public policy is about more than identifying the next piece of land to develop. It is about how we accommodate growth sustainably, make better use of the city we already have and protect the natural environment around us.

Does growth really have to mean growing out and beyond our city limits?

That is the much bigger question hiding underneath a fairly simple community event in Civic Square.

What kind of Canberra are we planning for in 20 or 30 years? How do we provide the housing people need and build connected, liveable communities while protecting the natural environment that has always been part of Canberra’s identity?

I don’t think those ambitions need to compete.

Good planning should allow us to do both – to accommodate more people within our existing urban footprint while making deliberate choices about the places we want to protect for generations to come.

Of course, those aren’t questions that will be solved by several hundred people doing the Nutbush on a Saturday morning.

But perhaps that’s not really the point.

What I love about this event is that it makes a serious conversation accessible. You don’t need to understand planning policy. You don’t need to consider yourself an environmental activist. You don’t even need to be particularly good at the Nutbush.

You just need to turn up.

And really, is there a more democratic dance?  You don’t need a partner or dance training. Someone plays those opening bars and Australians instinctively start arranging themselves into lines. For anyone whose muscle memory isn’t quite what it used to be, there will even be a practice run before the main event.

Bring your children. Bring your friends. Bring your parents. Bring the person in your life who insists they are an excellent dancer despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

And if dancing isn’t possible or isn’t your thing, there will be a seated, shaded area so you can still come along and be part of it.

Because this is what community can look like.

It doesn’t always have to be a meeting, a submission, a petition or a debate. Sometimes it is simply people showing up for something they value and having a bit of fun while they’re doing it.

So, on Saturday 19 September, I’ll be dusting off my Nutbush moves and joining a few hundred other Canberrans in Civic Square.  I cannot promise elegance. I cannot promise coordination. But I can promise enthusiasm.

And if there was ever a very Canberra way to celebrate our Bush Capital, surely it’s several hundred of us doing our very best Nutbush together for something that matters.

So, Canberra, let’s find 350 people. Let’s fill Civic Square. Let’s break the record.

Canberra’s Biggest Nutbush: Line Up for Our City Limits is on Saturday 19 September, 11 am–12 pm, at Civic Square. Everyone is welcome and participation is free. More than 350 people are needed to make it Canberra’s biggest Nutbush. Register through Humanitix here.