The contributions of architects, town planners, designers and arborists to Canberra in the years since it was created have been chosen by ArchivesACT as its Find of the Month for October.
The Archives said its Find of the Month focused on a single file that included some of the documents used to plan Canberra’s forests of the future.
It said that in 1917 two reports relating to afforestation in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) were received by the then Department of Home Affairs.
It said that after the first report which investigated the land outside the proposed Federal Capital for the commercial aspect of planting trees “or otherwise forming forests for economic purposes”, the Minister for Home and Territories thought more detailed consideration was needed.
ArchivesACT said a second report was then completed by the University of Adelaide’s Professor of forestry Horace Corbin, who provided some suggestions on forestry work to be done in the Federal Capital.
It said Corbin’s report analysed topics such as meteorology, catchment areas and river bends, as well as rabbits and repatriation.
“Establishing working plans for each individual forest was one of his key recommendations,” it said.
ArchivesACT said the records he used to research his report provided an interesting insight into another aspect of early ACT planning.
Readers interested in further research on this topic can contact ArchivesACT through its Request a Record service at this PS News link.
