At home with Andrew Barr: The chief minister on life in Canberra and how he's seen the city grow

If you were to embody all the great things you love about Canberra into a person, that someone would be ACT chief minister Andrew Barr.

In the territory’s top job for almost six years, Barr is basically a professional Canberran, if you ask me.

Despite being born in Lismore, NSW, he’s lived in the capital since the age of four. From north side to south, he’s packed his bags all around the city and has seen and helped transform it from a small town to the third best city to visit in the world, according to Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2018 list.

If you have ever wondered what home life is like for our chief minister, we caught up with him in his Inner North home.

Let’s take it back to the beginning. Tell me what life was like when you moved to Canberra.

I’ve been a journeyman through this city since 1977. We moved to a home in Macgregor, which was then the third last house within the Canberra border. There was nothing built beyond that at the time. 

After a few years, we moved to Flynn, then to Kambah in about 1980. From here up until the late 1990s, I lived in Chapman, Stirling, Fraser, Hawker, Torrens, Campbell, O’Connor, Florey, Barton, Pearce, Woden and Braddon.

When I met Anthony in 2000, we decided to move to Braddon for a few years and eventually bought a house in 2007 and have lived here in the Inner North ever since. We actually found it on Allhomes. It’s the longest I’d been in one spot in my entire life.

How have you seen Canberra change and evolve in the past two decades?

Canberra has definitely doubled in size and population and a lot of that growth has been in the past 20 years.

The city is more confident in and of itself than before. We’re still a bit shy in promoting ourselves but if I could describe the character of the city, it has gone from a small country town to a small city.

There’s been a tremendous lift in the quality of hospitality offerings here and we have quite identifiable precincts including Kingston and Braddon that are of international and national standards in terms of their cultural appeal and attraction. 

We’re such a young city and we’re constantly evolving.

And what about in your personal life over those years?

It’s amazing when you reflect on the past and how quickly time flies. Over this period of time, I managed to get a job and have committed to a career and this city.

I’ve lived the past 15 years, in particular, in the public spotlight but one of the things I’m most proud of is my relationship with Anthony.

During the past few years, I got married twice to him – once as a civil partnership and the second as a wedding, when marriage equality passed parliament – two very significant life-defining experiences.

My younger brother also had two kids who are now six and four. Since their arrival, they’ve become a big part of my life and I spend time with them when I do get the opportunity.

What are some standout memories you’ve had while living in this home?

I have to say, we’ve hosted a few good parties previously. Not so much in recent times but we had a lot of great family events.

I’ve also had many close encounters with Australian wildlife. At various points, our endeavours of growing vegetables in the back garden have been entirely as a food supply for possums, so it’s been a spectacular failure on multiple occasions.

We’ve also lived through two big renovations. This home was built in the early 1960s and when we bought it it was quite compact in terms of living areas, but the block size gave a little room for renovations.

In the first renovation, we added an extra bedroom and converted the initial master bedroom into an en suite. We also rendered the property and added a pergola to the front deck.

After the first reno, we said we’d never renovate again but after four years, we decided to do it again. This time the kitchen.

In your spare time, what do you get up to?

Depending on the time of the year, I either do a lot of walking or cycling. My neighbours are very used to seeing me out and about in exercise gear all around this area and that’s a combination of a short mental health break and getting some exercise in.

I used to be an avid traveller, exploring different pockets of Australia and the world which has been something I really enjoyed, although that has come to a crashing halt.

When I do get time, I commit some time to Netflix and still follow my favourite sports teams.

As we’ve been stuck at home most nights, the ABC comedy channel is doing reruns of Spicks and Specks every night at 7.30pm so we’ve been enjoying reliving our musical youth.

Read more of Allhomes’ 20th anniversary story series here.