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Westbourne Woods

Australian Capital Territory Heritage RegisterAustralian Capital Territory geography stubsForests of AustraliaUse Australian English from March 2018

Westbourne Woods is an area of exotic tree plantings in the Canberra suburb of Yarralumla in the Australian Capital Territory. The woods were established by Thomas Weston as an experimental planting area in 1913 and cover 120 hectares (300 acres). The names of the woods comes from Walter Burley Griffin's original name for the area. Trees were planted in holes blasted with dynamite, and Weston discovered that trees planted in blasted holes did much better than those planted in hand dug holes, probably due to the fracturing effect of the blast. By the end of 1920, George Weston's team of planters and put in 44,900 exotic trees. The woods is on the ACT Heritage Register.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Westbourne Woods (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Westbourne Woods
LBG, Canberra Yarralumla

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Wikipedia: Westbourne WoodsContinue reading on Wikipedia

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N -35.29871 ° E 149.08435 °
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2600 Canberra, Yarralumla
Australia
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Yarralumla brickworks
Yarralumla brickworks

The Yarralumla brickworks, also known as the Commonwealth Brickworks, was one of the earliest construction projects in Canberra, Australia. It was built in the suburb of Yarralumla to produce the bricks used to build many of Canberra's early buildings. It opened in around 1913 and operated until its closure in 1976. It is known for producing the bricks used to build itself. Narrow gauge goods railway lines for the transportation of bricks linked Yarralumla to some of the major building sites in central Canberra such as Old Parliament House, and the Kingston Power House. No sign of this early Canberra transport system remains today. The original brick kilns were built according to Walter Burley Griffin's designs with fan forced short chimneys intended to stay below the height of the surrounding pine trees. In 1950 after World War II increased building demands in Canberra meant that a large 46 metre natural-draft chimney was built for the new kilns. This greatly increased brick production capacity. The tall chimney is visible from many locations around central Canberra. In recent years a report found that the tall chimney was not earthquake-safe. As the chimney was heritage listed and located within falling distance of nearby homes, an engineering firm was called in to make it safe. A frame was built inside the chimney to support it without affecting its external appearance. The brickworks today is closed to the public but has had various uses over the past 20 years. There have been several recent ideas that haven't eventuated, including using the site for Canberra's new gaol, making the site the new permanent home for Floriade (a yearly Canberra flower festival) or to turn the brickworks into a holiday resort. Future plans for the site are still undecided. As of February 2015 it was proposed that a housing estate could be constructed on the site, consisting of 1800 dwellings.

Yarralumla, Australian Capital Territory
Yarralumla, Australian Capital Territory

Yarralumla () is a large inner south suburb of Canberra, the capital city of Australia. Located approximately 3.5 km (2.2 mi) south-west of the city, Yarralumla extends along the south-west bank of Lake Burley Griffin from Scrivener Dam to Commonwealth Avenue. In 1828, Henry Donnison, a Sydney merchant, was granted a lease on the western side of West Ridge part of which is now Western Park. In 1832 he named his property Yarralumla adopted from the name for an area some 35km to the west surrounding the Goodradigbee River. It is thought the area, spelt 'Yarrowlumla', was so named by local Aboriginal people, translated to English as "echo mountain". In 1881, the estate was bought by Frederick Campbell, grandson of Robert Campbell who had built a house at nearby Duntroon. Frederick completed the construction of a large, gabled, brick house on his property in 1891 that now serves as the site of Government House, the official residence of the Governor-General of Australia. Campbell's house replaced an elegant, Georgian-style homestead, the main portions of which were erected from local stone in the 1830s. Among the old Yarralumla homestead's most notable occupants were Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, who owned Yarralumla sheep station from 1837 to 1859, Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes, who owned the property from 1859 to 1881, and Augustus' father Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787–1873). The modern suburb of Yarralumla was gazetted by the government in 1928 and as of 2021 was home to approximately 3,120 people and many diplomatic missions. Notable locations include Lennox Gardens, the Albert Hall and the Hotel Canberra. Parliament House and The Lodge lie just outside its boundary.