I can't help you with the Quest Apartments, as I haven't stayed there, sorry, although the Quest Apartments I have stayed at in Brisbane and Melbourne were good.

The Canberra public transport system only consists of buses, no trains. There are a number of main hubs - the City (near the Quest), Belconnen, Woden and Tuggeranong. Each of those hubs represents the town centers of Canberra, so they have made it that the hub services the surrounding suburbs. You have to travel to that hub to go to another suburb (just like traveling with Singapore Airlines means always going via Singapore). That means, for example, that if you wanted to catch a bus from Mawson (a suburb in Woden) to the city, you have to catch a bus to the Woden hub, and then another from there to the City hub.

The bus frequency is also notoriously bad on evenings and weekends. They have just implemented a new timetable after a disastrous period where they lost 30% of their passengers. I don't know how the new service is going, but the bus company is admitting that it doesn't have enough drivers anyway.

All in all, I would say that the bus service is fine if you want to travel between major centers during the day, but for anything else a car is far better. Canberra residents will tell you that this is a city designed for cars. I gather from your post you have been here years ago, and I would say that traffic and public transport is relatively unchanged, apart from number of cars and spread of the city.

Thankyou DD... your advice has been g8... I will be in Canberra during the week and as for getting about the main thing that I have to do is get to the 'hub's'... so I might risk the buses...and if all else fails I can just hire a car

Thanks again your help it is very much appreciated

SB