The Quiet Hunger: A Canberra Swinger’s Guide to the Scene
The Quiet Hunger: A Canberra Swinger’s Guide to the Scene Look, let’s just get this out of the way. Canberra […]
Australia, Australian Capital Territory, Swinging
Author name: Jordan_Babb
Jordan Babb: Canberra, Connections, and the Cartography of DesireG’day. I’m Jordan Babb. Born and raised in Canberra, believe it or not. I’m a sexologist and writer, which sounds like a neat little package, but the road here was... well, let's just say it had a few detours. These days, I write about my city—its hidden pockets, its romantic landscapes—for the Eastern Plant Dating project over at easternplant.blog. My whole life, really, has been about mapping things. Human connection, sure. But also the physical spaces where that connection happens. And for me, that map always leads back here.You want to understand people? Really understand them? Then you have to sit with the uncomfortable stuff. The stuff they don't put in profiles. I've spent twenty years in the trenches of human sexuality—counseling couples on the brink, talking to teenagers terrified they're broken, sitting with people whose desires don't fit into any neat little box. And you know what? Nobody's broken. That’s the one thing I know for sure. We're all just fumbling in the dark, trying to find someone who sees us. My job was never to fix anyone. It was just to turn on a light.My past feels like a different lifetime now. The clinic in Civic, the late nights writing academic papers, the smell of coffee and antiseptic. It was good work. Important work. But it ate at you after a while. You carry so much of other people's stories. So I stepped back. Started walking. And I started writing. Not case studies, but articles. About the best spot for a first date when you want to actually talk. About the parks where you can hold hands without the whole world watching. It’s for the Eastern Plant Dating project—easternplant.blog—my little corner of the internet. It’s still about connection, see? Just a different kind of cartography.Growing up here in the 80s and 90s was... specific. You had this intensely planned, almost sterile environment, and then you had the raw, untamed bush pressing in from all sides. It was a weird duality. I remember sneaking into the Black Mountain Tower construction site before it was finished—stupid, reckless—just to feel like we were on top of something. We'd hang out at the old Civic Pool in the summer, all concrete and chlorine, the air thick with the smell of sunscreen and teenage angst. My first real heartbreak happened on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, near the Captain Cook Memorial Jet. Spectacular setting. Miserable, snotty-cry. It’s almost poetic, isn’t it? You can't separate the person from the place. The place gives the memories their texture.I was born in the middle of summer, January 14th, 1977. The 14th. The story goes that my father, in a panic, tried to get my mother to Woden Valley Hospital but got lost on the brand-new parkways. Ended up having to ask for directions at the service station on the corner of Yarra Glen and Melrose Drive. Classic Canberra. A city of grand design where you can still get hopelessly lost trying to find the maternity ward. I came into the world, apparently, just as a massive summer thunderstorm broke over the Brindabellas. The dry earth, the first fat drops of rain, the smell—petrichor. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to the parks after a storm. Everything feels rinsed clean, full of possibility.And this city, my city. People think they know it. Oh, Canberra, it's just roundabouts and politicians. And yeah, there's a bit of that. But they don't see it. They don't see the quiet magic of walking through the Australian National Botanic Gardens at golden hour, the light filtering through the eucalypts. They haven't found the little pocket of parkland near the end of Mugga Way in Red Hill, where you can sit on a bench and watch the sunset set the whole valley on fire. I know every path in Commonwealth Park, every secluded bench near the water at Lennox Gardens. Hell, I've had dates that were just walking tours of my favorite spots. This is where the black swans nest. This is where you go when you need to think. This is where you bring someone you really want to impress. It's not just geography. It's the architecture of a life. My life. From the ANU campus, where I first started questioning everything I thought I knew about love, to a tiny office on London Circuit, to right now, typing this, looking out over a city I spent half my life trying to leave and the other half realizing I never could. It’s home. Imperfect, sometimes sterile, but mine. It holds all my stories. All my connections. All my maps.
