Suburb # 21 Weston

Next stop was Weston, because Jay kept singing a certain damn jingle :p

Weston is named after a homestead in the area built in the early 1800s by Captain George Edward Nicholas Weston - a former officer of the East India Company who was granted the land, but rarely lived here. Its streets are named after artists.

Weston is home to the Cooleman Court shopping centre which is famous for the above mentioned annoying jingle - one of the several examples of scary advertising  and budget home made commercials that appeared on Canberran TV when I first moved here (along with a scary advertisement for "tiles with style").

I had been to CC before so this didn't surprise me - although I was amazed that it is still seems to be stuck in an awesome time warp. It even still has a Target country store. Remarkably though it also has Canberra's only Filipino restaurant (though as a vegetarian I am too scared to go in...).

The attractiveness of the rest of the suburb really was quite a surprise though, with some beautiful views and parks and no jingles - and even a pink house...

Suburb #20 - Duffy

Last weekend we also went to Duffy on the southside of Canberra for no specific reason.

Duffy is named after Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, a previous Victorian premier born in Dublin Ireland. He is described as a 'colourful figure', I am not sure if that means he swore a lot. The streets in Duffy are named after Australian dams and reservoirs.

Walking around Duffy felt a bit strange as I had never been here before, however, many of the street names were familiar from being on the news during the Canberra bush fires of 2003. About 200 houses were destroyed here plus the local petrol station. You can still see some of the damage if you look hard enough in my photos - and you can tell where the fire went by the age of the telegraph poles. It must be a horrifying reminder for some of the people who live here.

Just for the record, when your street directory shows lots of locked gates in Duffy they really are there...

And while I normally don't put photos of myself in this blog, here is me dressed inappropriately for our suburban adventure, doing a bad impression of a sheep.

Suburb # 19 Turner

It was such a beautiful day last Saturday that I decided to head out an explore a suburb nearby on foot. I chose Turner. For you non-Canberra folk, this is the first suburb in the so-called "inner north" that I believe I have explored as part of this project. I had been trying to leave these ones until later as they are my normal stamping ground but hey I needed some sun:)

Turner is named after Sir George Turner who was a Premier of Victoria and later a Federal Treasurer - in fact he was the first ever Federal Treasurer in 1901. He was made a Privy Councillor and a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George - now that is a title that sounds pretty impressive :p 

Turner's streets are named after writers, legislators and pioneers. The people who like numbers tell me that almost 19% of its population is aged between 15 and 24 - so yeah its where some of the cool kids live.

I had expected to find many pretty things in Turner as it has lots of trees, gardens, nature strips and large blocks;  and the top of the suburb lines up with Black Mountain on one side and Mount Majura on the other. This definitely proved to be the case, with beautiful gardens and typical Canberra inner north views  everywhere - particularly with Autumn leaves now on the way...

There are also some interesting buildings here and there - although the new apartment blocks have now taken over most of the suburb.

I was, however, starting to worry that I wouldn't find anything unexpected in Turner, so I tried to go down as many of the secret pedestrian pathways that go between the streets - as a result I came across a number of parts of Turner that I didn't no even existed....including most unexpectedly a Ukrainian orthodox church buried in a hidden corner of the suburb not far from civic :) And don't worry I didn't eat the mushrooms!