The Tea Centre.

The Tea Centre was founded in 1993 as a small Sydney store and calls itself a pioneer of specialty tea retailing in Australia; more than thirty years later its store list names twelve shops in New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT, with head office and warehouse in Brisbane. The Canberra shop is inside the Canberra Centre at 148 Bunda Street, the main shopping centre in Civic, and keeps the centre's hours: from nine through the week, until eight on Friday nights, and from ten on Sundays. Online orders ship from Brisbane; the shop is where you smell the leaf first.

The wall is organised by type, and loose leaf comes in 50, 100 and 250 g pouches. Black is the biggest shelf, nearly eighty teas from an English Breakfast and a Yorkshire-style blend to single lots such as Keemun OP, Second Flush Darjeeling, Yunnan FOP and several Assams; green holds Sencha, an organic Gunpowder, a pan-roasted Lung Ching Grade 3, genmaicha, hojicha and a jasmine Monkey King; the oolongs are Ti Kuan Yin, Milky Oolong, a Vietnamese high-mountain and a Taiwanese Dung Ti with hints of jasmine; white is Pai Mu Tan and Silver Needles, and matcha comes in a 30 g tin.

Beyond the classics the chain sells its own flavoured blacks and greens, a chai line from Masala to Mumbai, rooibos, an Australian native range in cartons (Smoked Redgum, Spiced Wattleseed, Davidson's Plum and Rosella) and a herbal shelf with chamomile, pure peppermint, hibiscus and yerba mate. Teaware, storage tins and gift boxes fill the rest of the shop. The reason to come to Bunda Street rather than order is the counter: to open a few pouches, pick a 50 g bag of something you have not tried, and walk out with it the same afternoon.