Mitchell is named after Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, a surveyor and explorer of NSW. Sir Mitchell was born in Scotland but jointed the British Army at the age of 16 and was soon storming fortresses in Portugal. He later explored lots of stuff in NSW and made lots of maps, but I am more interested by the fact that apparently he was the last person in Australia to challenge someone to a duel - when in 1851 he challenged Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson because he had criticised excessive spending by the Surveyor General's Department. I clearly must be more careful of my criticism of other public service agencies....but anyway, no-one died. They both missed. Apparently the guns are in the National Museum of Australia though.
The streets here are rather logically named after Australian industrialists.
So in Mitchell I expected to find lots of this..
But actually there is more to Mitchell than meets the eye! From the surprisingly beautiful and peaceful cemetery and crematorium at the back of the suburb...
To the awesome Korean supermarket...
And here as elsewhere in Canberra, sometimes you just find yourself almost in the middle of nowhere....
I knew the Archives were here but a lot of our other national attractions also seem to have annexes here - mind you a repository of Mitchells kind of worries me....
Some interesting street names here...given the nature of the suburb anyway....
But I was perhaps most chuffed to discover the true source of hip music in Canberra :)
So thank you Mitchell - a highly entertaining way to spend the afternoon - even though you caught on fire while we were there and I was slightly concerned we might be blown up, but hey - they can't call you boring :)
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