It *can* be a real bitch to find work in Canberra, I'd been applying left right and center to anything and everything since Feb and only just got a job last week (3 actually but I settled for only having one..) however, it really depends on like your availability and previous work experience though. I only had experience with office shit and office jobs want people 9-5 mon-fri which I couldn't do so yeh could explain my difficulty.
There are a lot of retail type jobs that get advertised for and a fair bit of hotel work and a lot of hospitality stuff, so haunting all the online job sites (seek, mycareer, jobsguide etc) helps, and once you're in canberra the saturday canberra times is a big help (like 12 pages full of job vacancies).
You'd find something eventually but it can be difficult.