Suburb #40 Hume

Suburb number 40 was the rather unusual industrial suburb of Hume - where less than 10 people lived until the ACT opened its first prison here in 2008.

Hume is named after explorer Hamilton Hume who is famous for finding/exploring Lake Bathurst, Jervis Bay, Yass plains, Berry, Braidwood, Port Phillip, Spencer Gulf, Blue Mountains and the Darling River. The streets here are named after Australian industrialists and businessmen.

OK so I have to admit that I was really quite worried about what the hell it would be worth photographing in Hume - but as usual Canberra surprised me.

I was especially amazed to find that there is actually an older heritage house in Hume called Hill Station. The homestead here dates back to 1909 and the property to the 1830s. Once upon a time this homestead entertained diplomats and foreign dignitaries, but unfortunately, it has been left to quite literally deteriorate which made me really sad - though apparently there are now plans to restore it. Despite the state of the property, it was, nevertheless, lovely to wander around and observe a group of artists at least using the property as their subject for the day :)

There also seems to be another former heritage property nearby - but I couldn't find out what it was as its all blocked off. Any ideas? let me know.

But one of the reasons that I wanted to go to Hume as from here you can follow the clues...

Go across (or rather under) the border of this suburb...

And into New South Wales...and you will find yourself in Environa!

This is a failed real estate development dating back to the 1920s that was intended to sit next to the ACT and mirror the ACT's Burley Griffin design...The land, which was originally part of the Hill Station property, was bought by a Henry Ferdinand Halloran - but the development never went ahead due to the Great Depression, with no blocks ever sold :(

Its now private property - still owned by Henry's family I believe. But from a distance you can still see the arch and and some of the stone pillars that were built. I found this fascinating - but then again I am a bit weird....I love this old photo of this arch as well.

Suburb #18 Symonston

On the way back north, we decided to stop in on Symonston - which is really an industrial suburb in Canberra.

Symonston is named after Sir Josiah Symon, a lawyer, politician and one time Attorney General of Aystralia. He was also one of the founders of the Constitution of Australia, and apparently had a collection of more than 10,000 books - which seems a bit odd given the nature of the suburb.

 

There is not a lot in Symonston to be honest - unless you have a burning need to visit Geoscience Australia or the Therapeutic Goods Administration, or involuntarily get sent to the detention centre there.  

The old Mugga Mugga cottage from the 1870s is, however, there. Unfortunately, it was not open when we were there, so I didn't get to go in - but the views from the front are still pretty impressive. Unexpectedly, there is also an olive grove apparently blessed by a greek goddess - again fairly strange given the surrounding, and several caravan parks...

 Oddly Symonston felt a bit like 'the end of Canberra' although it is realistically quite close to the centre.

Suburb # 10 Pialligo

We made it to double figures! It was time to go to Pialligo - the suburb that everyone pronounces differently. Why did we choose it? Well really because I love it and I wanted breakfast at the nursery there which is awesome.

The internet unusually doesn't seem to know what Pialligo means. Apparently it is a name of Aboriginal origin, and could mean 'a place for a pow-wow'. It first appeared on maps in the 1820s and apparently is what the parish that used to be here was called.

 

For any non-Canberrans, Pialligo is a small suburb just near Canberra airport. It is essentially two streets (one which seems a lot longer when you walk the whole length off it!).  If you want plants in Canberra this is the place to come with nurseries a go go. Its kind of a strange place - a street of country in the middle of the city almost. Personally, I love it - and if somebody offered me a house here with a beautiful garden I would be happy to quit my job and open a cafe/nursery/apple orchard like eveyone else on this road...

I took lots and lots of photos on our visit here...so its tough to choose only a couple.

There are lots of homes that at least look like they have been there a long time. 

 Not perhaps as long as Stonehenge though :p

 The tennis court has certainly see better days...

But this arch to nowhere was definitely new...

Telstra tower was still there in the distance reminding us we were still in Canberra....

 But we also found many unexpected things on our Pialligo visit.

 

And many beautiful things too :)

On our trip we also went to Pialligo Redwood Forest, which I didn't include above as oddly it doesn't actually seem to be in Pialigo ....but its close by, just past the airport.

The trees here were planted by Walter Burley Griffin in 1918. Its on the Commonwealth Heritage List as its the only known mature plantation of these particular trees in Australia.

But let me just say...this place is creepy. I am sure lots of teenagers have an awesome time getting stoned out here and make their own blair witch project movies...but it creeped me out even in the middle of the day. Sorry Walter - lovely trees but it feels like Belanglo. I am sure that if I every do write my Canberra crime novel the corpses will be found buried here!

Suburb #5 Beard

I will make an assumption here that none of you reading this have ever been to Beard and in fact you may not have even heard of it - so where is it? Well if you drive from Oaks Estate back towards Canberra Avenue/Fyshwick you will come to the new suburb of Beard with a very un-Canberraesque suburb name sign. And possibly a man with a beard as well....
 

Beard is not really a suburb yet - it started its modern life as "Fyshwick East Industrial Estate" in 2009, but became Beard later that year (though they still use the other name as well). In an earlier life, this was mainly a pastoral area, but then between the 40s and 70s it was the site of an abbatoir. Wow don't you just want to go there right now!

The suburb is aparently named after an "industrious" ex-convict called Timothy Beard (oh dear I think Dave must be on the ACT planning committee). It has streets named after minerals. Spongolite St is my favourite :) How cool an address would be 1 Spongolite St, Beard..if it was somewhere else...It looks like they wanted to develop a housing estate called Griffin Green here, but not sure whether this is progressing, and it will probably stay an industrial area I would imagine.

Lets just say that meeting my photo categories in this suburb was a little challenging, as Beard is  basically characterised by an absence of anything and some industrial buildings. I think I got there in the end though despite Jay doubting my ability to find anything beautiful here. I really hope they don't cut down the tree when they develop this suburb or they are in trouble.

Suburb #4 Oaks Estate

I was looking forward to visiting Oaks Estate, as Jay and I had previously been on an adventure out there as it used to be one of the only places in ACT that you could buy Aquavit (a Scandinavian spirit that will shock you into reality). I had thought it was really pretty and would be a nice place to live but at the time Jay thought I was a bit nuts (I guess he wasn't that enamoured with a view of Queanbeyan railway station)...so when I saw this article in the Canberra times about it being a potential new property hot spot I was interested to see whether it had changed much. But anyway...

Oaks Estate is (as suggested above) is right next to Queanbeyan and is somewhere where you can stand with one foot in NSW and one in ACT as demonstrated by Jay below in such a low-key way.

Oaks Estate takes its name from "The Oaks" an old farming estate dating back to the 1830s. It is still there but unfortunately you can't see as it as it is private property. There is an interesting local community website if you are interested that can tell you all about the historical features of the suburb. As this website notes, as The Oaks was basically ignored by the federal capital authority as it wasn't part of the "plan" for Canberra - luckily there is quite a lot of heritage left. You can see the heritage listed bus shelter (if you are weird like me and that interest you) and also "Robertson's House" which was built in 1912-13 by construction workers out of all sorts of weird and wonderful materials.

I think Gillespie park with the gazebo is really pretty. The local community vegie garden is also pretty impressive. If  you can ignore the slightly bad smell, a walk down along the Molonglo or Queanbeyan rivers is quite pretty. It looks like a project has started to clean up this river area which would be fantastic.

The bottle shop has currently sold out of Aquavit unfortunately, but the staff are lovely and still have an interesting collection of wine and spirits.

I had to include this additional photo plus because I thought it was cute, and I think confirms my original impression that this would be a nice place to live (assuming you had a car).

And just an extra photo showing the view over to NSW...