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Planned

View of Canberra City from War Memorial

Whew we are outside the War Memorial at last.

Canberra is odd place, a planned city built from scratch to be the nations capital.  The foundation stone was laid in the middle of sheep paddock in 1913 but with wars and the depression intervening things didn't move along very fast until the late 1950s.  They started to transfer government departments there in the 1960s.

I joined the influx of young graduates moving in and filling up government hostels in the 1970s, arriving there in 1974 and staying around 10 years.  In those days, every one had come from somewhere else and were planning to return to that somewhere else.

In 1974 the population was 180,000 today it is 360,000.

Comments

  1. JulieJuly 14, 2011 at 7:37 AM

    I went to Canberra for my very first teaching post in 1969, but only stayed 6 months when I was transferred to Newcastle. I stayed in Acton in the lodge that was burnt down last week. Lovely old place, quite colonial and 'raj'. Then I moved back with my husband and stayed from 1974 until the end of 1977. Very exciting time to be there. I worked for Dept of ACT in Civic as a computer programmer! We lived at Scullin first before buying in Curtin.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joan ElizabethJuly 15, 2011 at 7:31 PM

    We were there at the same time Julie. We lived in Curtin, Hughes, Hawker, Turner, Oconnor, Lynham and Swinger Hill. Quite a list for just 10 years.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joan ElizabethJuly 15, 2011 at 7:32 PM

    And I was a computer programmer too,

    ReplyDelete
  4. JulieJuly 16, 2011 at 4:32 AM

    *grin*

    But where is Swinger Hill? Very uncanberran name ...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Joan ElizabethJuly 16, 2011 at 7:37 PM

    Swinger Hlll is actually part of Philip very near Woden shopping centre. It is townhouse development ... Canberra has an awful lot of medium density housing.

    I remember one of our first visitors sniffing and saying this is the Redfern of the future. You see, I also like the tightly packed inner city ... it is just the suburbs I dislike.

    ReplyDelete

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