Captain Cook

The Captain Cook Memorial globe at Regatta Point. This is only half of the memorial - the other part wasn't in operation on Saturday because of the wind. It's a water jet in the lake, which shoots up nearly 150 metres into the air. When it's windy, the water can blow across onto Commonwealth Avenue Bridge, and can be a traffic hazard, so you'll have to wait for another day for a photo of that.

The globe shows the routes of Captain James Cook's three voyages - you can see the red, yellow and blue lines better on the image below.

A castle in Canberra

Canberra is full of surprises, including this castle in Commonwealth Park, down by Nerang Pool. 

It's a fabulous playground for kids, and I was there with the boy-child to celebrate his friend's birthday. Plenty to keep them amused here - tunnels, ladders and secret spaces to hide in.

X O O

Early morning shadows on the playground in Mt Rogers Reserve. There are a lot of these playgrounds - most of them almost identical - in Canberra's parks and preschools. The company responsible for them must have done very well out of Canberra ...

Lost dog

Lost dog notice on Mount Rogers.

Woden in the distance

If you turn 90 degrees clockwise from yesterday's view, this is what you'll see (roughly - remember these are photos from April 2009).

The promontory on the left is Black Mountain Peninsula, which is mainly a recreation area with barbecues, a playground and other facilities. The one on the right, coming from the far bank of Lake Burley Griffin, is Weston Park, another large recreation area. Yarralumla is the first suburb beyond the park, and the white tower in the distance marks the Woden Town Centre. The Tuggeranong Valley and all its suburbs extends further back towards the mountains.

Chalk declaration

Shhhh ... don't tell anyone, but I think Mano and Jamie like each other ...

Kicking around in Macgregor

This sculpture is on the corner of Southern Cross Drive/Parkwood Road and MacFarlane Burnett Avenue in a new section of Macgregor that's still under development. No idea who the artist is or anything else about it, although I did hear that last week someone had added an old television, a lounge and a stuffed dog, but they've now been removed.

Steel vines

Vines decorating a metal column in Margaret Timpson Park, Belconnen.

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.

Big slide

This is the big slide at Kambah District Park. Off Springbett Street in Kambah, this is a fabulous family park that I hadn't visited before. Enough to keep kids busy and active for hours, with slides, swings, flying foxes, an adventure playground and more. And plenty of big shady trees when the sun is a bit strong. We'll definitely be heading back.

Black Mountain Guide Hall

Throughout the suburbs of Canberra you may come across small halls, often located adjacent to public ovals or parks, usually with a gravel carpark and nothing much else around them. These are the places where Girl Guides and Scouts meet. This particular hall is the Black Mountain District Girl Guide hall, located in Clianthus St in the suburb of O'Connor.

Stormy weather

It's been a little damp here in the past 24 hours. We've had some violent electrical storms and sudden heavy downpours, and the stormwater system is getting a good run. Fortunately, the suburbs of Canberra have numerous low-lying green belts designed to take the overflow.

This Eastern Great Egret looks like he's waiting to cross the torrent. He might have to wait awhile ...

A minute later the heavens opened again, and I had to run for the shelter of the car. Meanwhile the egret continued to stand there.

RAAF Memorial Grove

If you turn to the right from the propeller in yesterday's photo, your eye wanders down a path towards a sandstone cairn, through the RAAF Memorial Grove. WWII Royal Australian Air Force veterans started the grove in 1954. The cairn came later, but it wasn't until 2002 that the grove was formally consecrated.

It was starting to rain when we dropped in, but hopefully I'll get back there soon and have a proper look at the memorial plaques along the path.

RAAF propeller

The Dowty-Rotol propeller symbolises, according to the plaque, the Royal Australian Air Force's operational and heritage links with the national capital, and the supporting structure reflects the strength of its people.

This propeller is located just off the Federal Highway near the ACT-NSW border, as you approach from the Sydney side (north). It's in the Hughie Edwards VC (Victoria Cross) Rest Area, one of a series of rest areas along the Remembrance Driveway dotted along the Hume and Federal Highways between Sydney and Canberra.

Dancing on water

In a lily pond in Commonwealth Park, there is a strange flock of birds.They have long steel stilts for legs, and remind me of somewhat raggedy brolgas, although the sculptor - Alan Gauir - hasn't specified what species they are, or given his sculpture a name. He won first prize in the 1991 Floriade sculpture competition, and have remained to keep a beady eye on things.

Floriade 2011: not the flowers

The 35 metre ferris wheel is a great way to see the floral patterns on the ground:

The street organ is at Floriade each year (and the operator takes requests):

Where there are flowers, there are butterflies ...

The reptile display was a big hit. And so were the gnomes:

Floriade 2011: around Nerang Pool

 

Looking across Nerang Pool, with the Captain Cook Memorial Jet in the background.

 

Black swans on Nerang Pool.

Floriade

We headed into town today to visit Floriade, a huge celebration of Spring and annual display of floral design in Commonwealth Park. This year we had a special reason to visit: my daughter was involved, together with a team from her school, in helping to plant some of the million + bulbs back in April, although she wasn't quite sure today just which ones were hers!

Floriade has a different theme each year. This year is was a Feast for the Senses, and while at ground level it wasn't always clear what each garden bed represented, from higher up you could see a giant coffee cup, a huge chilli pepper, a decorated cake, flames on a barbecue, and other food-related symbols, all created from tulips, hyacinths, bluebells, ranunculus, irises, violas, pansies, poppies and more.

There was also a Victory Garden, carnival rides, a children's area, plenty of places to eat, and a special area devoted to garden gnomes :)

I'll have more images from Floriade over the next week or so.

Bandstand, Glebe Park

This is the bandstand, or rotunda, in Glebe Park, Civic. The bandstand only dates from 1989, although the park itself was defined and named in 1983.

In the early 1840s, the land was given to the Anglican Church for use as a glebe - a parcel of land used to support the rector and parish. At the same time, land in nearby Reid was given for a church - St John the Baptist (generally known as just St John's Reid) - which was consecrated in 1845. The rectory was built in the 1870s, across the road near the present location of the Lutheran Church in Reid. After a new rectory was built closer to the church in 1926, the building was used as a school and a guest house, but was finally removed in the 1950s, after being sold to the Acton Football Club, who used the bricks to build a clubhouse in Forrest.

Some of the elm trees in Glebe Park are around 100 years old, descendants of the original plantings by a St John's rector in the 1850s-70s.

Facing the flag

Looking from the end of Acton Peninsula across Lake Burley Griffin and Lennox Gardens to Parliament House. Before the man-made lake was filled, this area was a dairy farm and then a golf course, and a yacht club was based there later. It's now a public park, with barbecue and picnic facilities.