Mawson is named after Sir Douglas Mawson - explorer of the Antarctic - who managed to travel to and raise a flag at the magnetic South pole in 1909. This was despite frostbite, his companions falling down crevices and descending into madness, and being required to eat his own sled dogs to survive.
The streets here rather logically thus have the theme of Antarctic exploration.
I had never been here before and boy was I missing out. It might not be the prettiest suburb I have visited but it was a multicultural joy - a place of many unexpected foodie finds :)
There a two sets of shops in Mawson - the Swinger Hill shops (yeah that makes sense right) and the Mawson shops.
At the Swinger Hill shops, where there is a sculpture commemorating Sir Douglas (again not overly logical), there are two restaurants that I need to try - a Vietnamese one, Green Bamboo, that keeps making me hungry via Facebook, and an Indian place, Jehangir, that I have heard great things about. I missed chilli night here :(.
At the actual Mawson shops, you will then find a Serbian club and an Austrian club on one side of the road, and then middle eastern/arabic food heaven on the other. We had an amazing lunch at Canberra's only Palestinian cafe here. Wander around and just smell all the spices, you won't regret it.
But only a few streets away, you will find a gorgeous colourful Hindu temple!
I had a great adventure here. Indeed, in many ways, this suburb really is what this blog is all about - finding the unexpected in a city that everybody judges without even visiting here, except potentially on a school excursion to the war memorial! OK it may not be the equivalent of Singapore's little India and Kampong Glam but hey its only 20 minutes in the car :p
So it is probably quite apt that in Mawson they have a Power St and that this suburb was number 50 :)
I plan to send my eldest boy to the Mawson Primary School next year. It has a Mandarin immersion program. This means that in kindi, he spends one day a week in a Chinese classroom speaking Mandarin all day with a Chinese teacher. And he learns the ACT curriculum in Chinese. The days in the Chinese classroom increases when he starts school proper.
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