ArchivesACT has used its October Find of the Month to mark Gungahlin’s 30th anniversary by revisiting one of its previous Finds that celebrated the District’s 25th anniversary.
Archives said its 2016 October Find of the Month explored records documenting Gungahlin’s development.
“Ginninderra Village in Gungahlin is one of Canberra’s earliest settlements,” Archives said.
“The Gungahlin District that surrounds it is of course much more recent, but even this ‘new’ part of Canberra has already come of age,” it said.
“Gungahlin is particularly interesting because it was the first of Canberra’s town centres to be developed by the ACT Government rather than the Commonwealth.”
Archives said the District’s development also came at a time when planners were increasingly grappling with environmental issues and working to come up with sustainable development approaches.
The Agency said Gungahlin’s name was derived from the Goongarline homestead, built by William Davis on land in the Gungahlin district in the early 1860s.
“The first village for Gungahlin was called Ginninderra Village (in present day Gold Creek Village) and grew from the first Ginninderra store and post office which opened in 1859, near Ginninderra homestead,” it said.
“The Commonwealth Government officially gazetted the name of Gungahlin District, along with all the other districts located within the ACT, in March 1966.”
It said with the exception of Ginninderra Village, the Gungahlin area was predominately a rural landscape from the mid-1820s until the 1990s.
Archives said that in 1991 the ACT Planning Authority (ACTPA) estimated a demand for around 2,900 new residential dwellings per year for the Territory, with about 1,500 to 2,000 of these to be built in new settlement areas.
“While ACTPA considered a number of different areas in Canberra suitable to meet this demand, Gungahlin was the only area large enough to be developed in time to meet the need,” it said.
“In October 1991, Chief Minister Rosemary Follett officially launched ‘Canberra’s fourth satellite city’ of Gungahlin.”
Archives said as part of the launch, the suburbs of Amaroo, Casey, Crace, Franklin, Harrison, Kenny, Kinlyside, Moncrieff, Mulanggarri, Ngunnawal, Nicholls and Taylor were named.
ArchivesACT’s October Find of the Month can be accessed at this PS News link.
