Sun on the water

The Murrumbidgee River near Uriarra Crossing.

O'Neill's Pub

On the bend in Woolley Street, Dickson.

Friday night in Dickson

Looking along Woolley Street.

Dickson Dumpling House

We had a family birthday dinner at the Dickson Dumpling House last night, and I can highly recommend the $20 banquet - there was far more food than we could manage in one sitting, and all of it delicious.

The restaurant is located in Cape Street, Dickson, at the end of Woolley Street.

Confucius in Canberra

Canberra has its own little Chinatown in the northern suburb of Dickson. Well, not much more than a single street, and not even all of that is Chinese. There's Italian, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese and a pub called 'O'Neill's', so it's a bit of a mix, but there are a number of good Chinese restaurants in Woolley Street.

And on the corner of Woolley and Cape Streets stands this statue of Confucius. Carved from limestone in the birthplace of Confucius, the statue was given to Canberra to mark the tenth anniversary (in 2010) of the Sister City agreement between Canberra and Beijing.

Australia Day

On City Walk, just around the corner from yesterdays photo - a thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) and waratahs.

You are here

Just in case you weren't sure where you were ...

Taken in August last year, on the corner of City Walk and Akuna Street, Civic.

Don't forget your socks!

KidCity, in the suburb of Mitchell, is one of those indoor play centres with gates to keep the kids in, and coffee and wifi to keep the parents happy. Inside, it's much the same as play centres everywhere - big slides, netted areas to climb up and into and through, and ballpits with lots of brightly-coloured plastic balls. The McDonalds of playgrounds ...

Resting place

There were only ever three churchyard burial grounds in the ACT (the others are at Weetangera and St John's, Reid). These days people are buried in large multi-denominational cemeteries, and previously internments were in rough bush graves or small private cemeteries on properties.

The individual markers here are long gone, but the names of 18 people buried in the St Paul's Ginninderra burial ground are commemorated on a plaque, erected by the Southwell Family Society in 1995. There were probably more burials in the area, but there's no record of them.

[From the ACT Heritage Register]

Burials in St Paul's Burial Ground, Ginninderra
(References: Ferret & Murdock 1983; Canberra & District Historical Society files; Commemorative Plaque
on site, St Paul's Burial Ground; Cope, 2006)

Known European burials whose names appear on commemorative plaque:

EDGE, Ralph
Abode: Round Hill, Ginninderra
Died: 9th Sep 1872
Buried: 11th Sep 1872
Age: 80 years
Ceremony performed by Rev. Pierce Galliard Smith [*Rector of St John's]

SMITH, Anne
Abode: Ginninderra Creek
Died 24th Jun 1873
Buried: 26th Jun 1873
Age: 27 years
Ceremony performed by Rev. Pierce Galliard Smith
[*Died in childbirth; buried close to the church building; aunt of Marian Smith.]

GROCOTT, Robert [*labourer]
Abode: Charnwood
Died: 14th Jul 1874
Buried: 16th Jul 1874
Age: 79 years
Ceremony performed by Rev. Pierce Galliard Smith

GROCOTT, Hannah, Maria
Abode: Budellick, Ginninderra
Died: 6th Mar 1877
Buried: 7th Mar 1877
Age: 91 years
Ceremony performed by Rev. Pierce Galliard Smith

TINSLEY, Thomas
26th Dec 1881
Occupation: Shepherd

CAMERON, Janet Alexandria
3rd Nov 1883
Age: 2 years 8 months
Daughter of Charles & Margaret Cameron

CAMERON, ANN
17th May 1883
Age 79 years
Wife of Donald Cameron

CAMERON, Donald
1st Jul 1883
Age: 52 years
Husband of Elizabeth McDonald

WELLS, Charlotte
10th Apr 1884
Age: 64 years
Wife of Thomas

CAMERON, Elizabeth
22nd Jun 1885
Age: 42 years
Wife of Donald Cameron

BOLTON, Francis James
21st Jul 1885
Age: 8 months
Son of Joseph & Mary Griffith

CAMERON, Alexander
8th Mar 1886
Age: 51 years
Husband of Mary Ann Ryan

SUMNER, William
11th Oct 1886
Age 76

HOLLIGAN, Thomas
Abode: Ginninderra
Died: 25th Oct 1887
Buried: 29th Oct 1887
Age 74 years
Ceremony performed by Rev. Pierce Galliard Smith
[*Gored to death by a bull]

JONES, Thomas
Abode: Ginninderra
Died 9th Jun 1888
Buried: 11th Jun 1888
Age; 75 years
Profession: lawyer [*sawyer]
Ceremony performed by Rev. Pierce Galliard Smith

MORRIS, Henry
Abode: Hall
Died: 23rd Mar 1894
Buried: 25th Mar 1894
Age: 79 years
Profession: Shoemaker
[*Service read by A.M. Grant]

MORRIS, Lucy Ellen
Abode: Hall
Died: 22nd Sep 1898
Buried: 23rd Sep 1898
Age: 29 years
Service read by A.M. Grant [*Rev. P. Presswell]

STEAR, Charlotte Eliza
Abode: Majura
Died: 19th Sep 1900
Buried: 21st Sep 1900
Age: 2 years
Drowned in a well near her home
Ceremony performed by Rev. Pierce Galliard Smith

Others believed to be buried in St Paul's Burial Ground:

RYAN, (names unknown)
Buried: 4th Sep 1865
Father: Michael Ryan
Mother: Margaret Warren

MCPHEE, Hugh
1878
Occupation: Schoolteacher

DONALD, Sandy
1884

PLUMMER, William
18th May 1886
Age; 33
Son of Levi & Francis Guttridge

MCPHERSON, Jane Elizabeth [*MacPherson]
Died: 8th Jul 1886
Age: 7 years
[*Died at Wallaroo. Research carried out by Mr. Keith Kilby indicated that there were three children in the MacPherson family who died about the same time – two were buried underneath a tree in the garden of their home and the other in the Ginninderra cemetery.]

O'BRIEN, Bridget
Buried: 24th Jul 1886
Father: John O'Brien
Mother: Jane Daley

WALL, Agnes
Buried: 12 April 1883
Age: 64

Aborigines:
Two unknown Aboriginal people are believed to have been buried in or in the vicinity of the lower corner
of the block.

[* Information from The History of the Anglican Church in Ginninderra, 1821-1983, by Margaret Ferrett and Jenifer Murdock]

St Paul's Ginninderra, Evatt

Lyall Gillespie Collection

These photos are from the new (2010) sign on the site of the old St Paul's Anglican Church and burial ground site in Evatt. The sign gives a brief history of the church and site. The drawing below is dated 1926, so the photo must have been earlier than that, but clearly the church was already disused, and probably had been for some years, so possibly it was taken in the 1910s or early 20s. Perhaps the building was used as some sort of farm storage once it had started to deteriorate - there seems to be a cart in the drawing below.

Sketch of St Paul's Church, Ginninderra, by Eireen Mort

What lies beneath

On the corner of Copland Drive and Moynihan Street, Evatt, is what seems to be a vacant block of land. There's not much there - a few poplar trees, some more established than others, a few young eucalypts around the fence, and a lot of sparse, tussocky, weedy grass with a few blue and pink patches of tiny flowers. The only thing that you might find intriguing is the 'Historic Cemetery' sign along the Copland Drive edge.

I've been meaning to find out about it for ages, and I finally had the chance this weekend.

On 12 May 1861, St Paul's Church of England was opened on this site. At the time, it was part of Ginninderra Station, owned by the Campbell family. If you've been following this blog for a while, you might remember a park - Glebe Park - in the city, which was previously land donated to the Church of England to help support the rector of St John's, Reid. Well, there were three such parcels of land donated by the Campbells as glebes, and this what remains of one of them. The glebe consisted of 200 acres - 1 acre for a church, 2 acres for a burial ground, and the remainder to be leased to tenant farmers to provide an income for the church for maintenance and support.

St Paul's was a small rural church - 5m x 9m, with a tiny porch and a bell-cote. It was partly built in slab and weatherboard, and partly in lath and plaster, with a shingle roof and Gothic windows. The type of construction meant it needed constant maintenance.

From April 1862, the building also functioned as a school. The school attendance fluctuated, as was often the case in rural communities when children were required to help on the farm at times, and it could also be difficult to cross Ginninderra Creek in times of heavy rain. By 1870, the numbers had fallen to below 7, and the school closed.

In 1882, the village of Hall was established and became much more important to the local community than Ginninderra. St Paul's was still used until 1900, but in 1904 it was severely damaged  in a storm and left to deteriorate.

The suburb of Evatt was established in the 1970s, and part of the old burial ground was lost under newly constructed roads. Many of the old grave markers were made of timber, and had deteriorated and disappeared, and there was no record of the actual plots. This space was used as a construction parking area during the suburb's development.

A new parish of St Paul's Ginninderra was established in 1981, and the block was designated for a new church building. however, the parishioners decided not to go ahead with this, and initially met in the primary school at Melba, and more recently in the Spence primary school (which is no longer used as a school, and has a number of tenants apart from the church).

Reference: Most of the historical information given here is from the ACT Heritage Register.

Skywatch Friday: Incoming storm

4.12pm, Friday 20 January 2012

4.24pm, Friday 20 January 2012

4.58pm, Friday 20 January 2012

We've got the numbers

In 1905, the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics was established. Originally located in Melbourne, it moved to Canberra in 1928, and between 1924 and the late 1950s, the Bureau gradually unified all the separate State statistical offices. In 1974, the CBCS was replaced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics - the ABS.

If you'd like to know the current population of Australia, the ABS website is the place to go (at the time of writing, the population is 22,807,239 and rising at a rate of about 1 person every 1 minute and 34 seconds ).

ANU entrance

Entrance to the Australian National University, off Barry Drive.

Canberra High School

The main entrance to Canberra High School, Macquarie. Canberra High School relocated to Macquarie in 1968, after being located in Acton (in what is now the ANU School of Art building) from 1939.

Patterns

Policing Gungahlin

This is the Gungahlin Joint Emergency Services Centre, built in 1998 at the corner of Gozzard and Anthony Rolfe Streets. The police are at this end of the building, and the ambulance and fire brigade services are based a little further to the left of the photo.

Let's go bowling

It's the middle of the summer school holidays here, and yesterday we went bowling at AMF Bowling Belconnen. Lots of fun!

DJ639 to Sydney

Just a short walk out to the plane ...

Gates 10 & 11, Canberra Airport

Scaled down

I haven't had much opportunity to take photos recently, so I had a look back through some old ones, and found this miniature Stonehenge, taken at Cockington Green, Nicholls, in March 2006.

Fish'n'chips, anyone?

Florey Takeaway. There are plenty of these shops, specialising in hamburgers and hot chips, scattered throughout Canberra's suburbs, but not all of them can boast such bright tilework!

Florey shops

Part of the Florey shops, with the fairly typical verandah-style frontage and central car parking area.

Neon

One last image from Sydney. This is the 'view' from our hotel room at night - just across the road from Westfield Miranda (thank goodness for blockout curtains!).

With nearly 400 shops, this centre is the largest in the southern part of Sydney, and in 2010 turned over $723.6 million. There are approximately 13.4 million visits to this shopping centre each year - with 7 day trading, that's over 37,000 people a day through the doors. No wonder it seemed really crowded!

City view

It's a fair distance from Miranda to the centre of Sydney, but if you leant out from our motel balcony you could see the unmistakeable shape of Centrepoint Tower (which I believe is now Westfield Tower or something similar - Westfield seems to be taking over the world!).

Hello cocky!

We've had a few days in Sydney this week, visiting family. Not many photos, as we seemed to spend most of the time talking, eating, and wandering around shops, although I have a few shots to share over the next days.

We stayed in a motel in the suburb of Miranda, in the southern part of Sydney. This cockatoo greeted us on the balcony of our room each morning, shuffling along and apparently waiting to see if we'd offer food. Just as well we didn't - the receptionist told us as we were checking out that if you feed them, the cockatoos will happily invite themselves into the room, and those claws and beak at close quarters in a motel room are probably not a good idea!

Photo of the Year 2011

Each year, on January 1, many City Daily Photo bloggers post their best photo of the preceding year. This is my choice:

This photo was originally posted on 8 June 2011, and features the ACT Memorial in Civic.

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants