Down at the Canberra Centre, residents were shoulder to shoulder, joining in the annual retail pilgrimage with fervour despite the year's public service cuts and warnings we have squandered the biggest boom the country has seen.

Many of the centre's stores, such as Oroton Surf, Dive and Ski and Cotton On, even had lines behind the cash registers, a thrill for school and university students manning many of the shops.

First-year University of Canberra student Jeremy Mututu, 18, of Isaacs, and his colleague Michael Santos, 16, of Franklin, were working the Christmas sale for the first time at Cotton On.

"It definitely builds your confidence in sales," Mr Mututu said.

And the spending storm was not confined to Civic. Woden and Belconnen Westfield Centre manager Karen Skinner said they had "serious bargain hunters lining up outside the Woden and Belconnen stores" before they opened at 7am.

"There is a fantastic energy down here. Despite the crowds, there is a great, relaxed holiday feel with more families in the mall than normally," she said.

Ms Skinner said the early lines had set them off for a good day, which was looking "like it would be at least in line with last year's [Boxing Day trade]".

"And it's not just the shops, we've had big crowds come to the movies today and our cafes have been bustling," she said.

Ms Skinner even took a break from her duties to indulge in a little retail therapy herself, snapping up from work clothes and family gifts at David Jones.

Mid-way through wrapping "a massive lantern", Lucy Dingwall, 18, of Ngunnawal, working at the Dusk candle store inside Westfield Belconnen, said it, too, was having a "pretty good day".

Ms Dingwall said while people were not spending "loads of money", the mall had been "constantly" full of shoppers.

It's a far cry from earlier in the year, when Myer elected not to proceed with a new store at Westfield Woden, with shops sitting empty and some vendors struggling to stay open.

Adding to the challenges, in a city of mainly office workers it is no surprise that 45 per cent of ACT spending is done online, an annual Australian National Retailers Association (ANRA) survey shows.

One shopper, saying she thought the Canberra Centre crowds were "a little thinner than usual", admitted she was down at the centre just to "pick up a few things" after doing most of her summer shopping on the office PC.

Indeed, the bricks-and-mortar retail chaos proved too much for some punters.

One shopper, cornered and defeated by her trolley overflowing with soft furnishings, clung to her shopping centre seating like Titanic's Rose to her raft.

"I've had enough, it's time to go home," she said.