I did not grow up in a fantasy kingdom. I learned to read my own city through one.
At ten, I carried two maps of home.
One was Canberra: Yarralumla’s streets, Lake Burley Griffin, the Carillon, Black Mountain and the long suburban distances between them. The other was Hyrule, the kingdom I explored in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I never confused the two. Childhood imagination works through correspondence: this hill becomes that mountain; this creek acquires a hidden kingdom; an ordinary route becomes a quest.
Ocarina of Time arrived on the Nintendo 64 in 1998. By 2000, when I was ten, its geography had settled over Canberra like a second map. The game did not help me escape the city. It gave the city a language.
Canberra lends itself to this treatment. Walter Burley Griffin’s plan placed the lake, hills and surrounding landscape inside the city’s organising geometry rather than treating them as scenery beyond it. The National Triangle, the Land Axis and the Water Axis make Canberra feel unusually legible from above: a designed overworld divided by water, bushland and distant landmarks. National Capital Authority
Yarralumla was my Kokiri Village. It was the small, enclosed world in which adventure first seemed possible. Yarralumla Primary School was my starting area; the paths, playgrounds and nearby streets formed the safe perimeter of childhood. My uniform was even green, and our symbol was a tree.
The point is not that Yarralumla resembles Kokiri Forest. It is that both represent the same condition: the protected place a child must eventually leave.
Lake Burley Griffin became Lake Hylia, the body of water around which the rest of the map arranged itself. On its shore, the National Carillon became my Temple of Time. As a child, I called it the Organ Building, not yet understanding what happened inside its three angular columns.
The real structure is stranger and more impressive than my invention. Opened in 1970, the Carillon contains 57 bronze bells weighing a combined 32 tonnes. Its Westminster Chimes mark each quarter-hour, turning architecture into measured sound. A major 2020 restoration added two bells, including a five-tonne Ngunnawal bell dedicated in consultation with Ngunnawal Elders. National Capital Authority
That history matters. Calling Canberra my Hyrule is a private mythology, not a replacement for the place beneath it. Canberra stands on Ngunnawal Country. Its landscape carries histories far older than Griffin’s plan, my childhood or Nintendo’s kingdom. Imagination should deepen attention to a place, not erase what was already there.
Black Mountain was inevitably Death Mountain. Its dark ridge rises over the city, crowned by the 195.2-metre telecommunications tower that once seemed impossibly high. The tower served the same function as a mountain in a game: visible from almost anywhere, it told me where I was.
For now, the summit has become more inaccessible than it was in childhood. Telstra Tower remains closed for renovation, with reopening scheduled for December 2027. It continues operating as communications infrastructure, but the observation decks and panoramic views must wait. Telstra
The closure feels almost appropriate. Every adventure needs a landmark visible long before it can be reached.
Tuggeranong Creek became Zora’s Domain: water, seclusion and the sense of a world continuing below the surface. Belconnen belonged to the Rito, despite the fact that the bird-like people entered Zelda’s mythology after Ocarina. Its elevation, wind and broad western sky made the association unavoidable. Private mythologies are not obliged to respect franchise canon; they accumulate as we do.
Curtin, particularly my old home on Bowser Place, became the Great Deku Tree: not a visual resemblance but a root system. It was the place from which the rest of my life appeared to branch. The accidental Nintendo reference in the street name only strengthened the spell.
Yet the deepest connection between Canberra and Ocarina of Time is not geographical. It is temporal.
In the game, Link begins as a child, sleeps for seven years and awakens as an adult. He moves between the two ages, returning to familiar places altered by time and consequence. Actions taken in childhood reshape the adult world. The player knows the map, but no longer inhabits it in the same way. Nintendo
That is what returning to Canberra feels like.
Kid Albert explored it at ground level, measuring distance through bike rides, school days and family trips. Adult Albert sees the same terrain through work, loss, responsibility and memory. The landmarks remain recognisable, but their meaning has changed. The Carillon is no longer merely mysterious; Black Mountain is no longer impossibly high. Yarralumla has become both a suburb and a preserved version of myself.
When I first imagined this essay, “Father Albert” belonged to the future. He does not anymore. Now the map carries another possibility: showing my child the places that formed me without insisting they inherit my interpretation of them. Their Canberra may acquire an entirely different mythology. That is as it should be.
Research into place attachment describes childhood environments as inseparable from later autobiographical identity. We remember places through the people, emotions and stories attached to them; physical geography becomes part of the account we give of our lives. Journal of Environmental Psychology
Hyrule gave my memories a structure. Kokiri Village meant beginnings. The Temple of Time meant change. Death Mountain meant difficulty. The Great Deku Tree meant origin. These symbols allowed a ten-year-old to understand a city long before he understood planning, history or nostalgia.
The parallel has acquired one final turn. Nintendo has announced that Ocarina of Time will return in 2026, rebuilt for the Nintendo Switch 2 and introduced to another generation. The game is travelling through time again, just as its original players enter parenthood and middle age. Nintendo Australia
Perhaps that is why the comparison still holds. Canberra and Hyrule are both places I first knew as a child, left without entirely leaving, and continue to rediscover as someone older.
Hyrule did not replace Canberra. It taught me how to read it.
