Canberra: history, population and living in the ACT

The first peoples

The area's first peoples include the Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri. The first British settlers described two clans of Ngunnawal people living in the vicinity. The Canberry or Nganbra clan's country lay mostly around Sullivan's Creek, with ceremonial grounds at the foot of Galambary, or Black Mountain, while the Pialligo clan's land was around what is now Canberra Airport. Those who lived here managed the land with fire, grew yams and hunted for food.

Traces of that long past survive: rock shelters that were lived in, paintings and engravings, burials, camps, quarry sites and stone tools. Artefacts point to human activity in the area some 21,000 years ago. Ngunnawal men still hold ceremony beside the Murrumbidgee River, travelling upstream as they receive their Totems and their responsibilities for looking after the land.

Black Mountain, known as Galambary, is a significant Aboriginal meeting and business site, mainly for men's business, while the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people say Mount Ainslie is primarily a place of women's business. The two hills are referred to as women's breasts. Caves beneath Lake Burley Griffin, now submerged, held Aboriginal rock art, among the few sites of their kind in the region.

The name Canberra

Canberra's name comes from the language of a local Ngunnawal or Ngambri clan, the people early British colonists called the Canberry, Kanberri or Nganbra tribe. In 1823 Joshua John Moore, the region's first European land-owner, called his grant Canberry after them. Maps from 1830 show Canberry Creek and Canberry, and the spelling Canberra began to appear from about 1857. Other recorded spellings include Canbury, Canburry and Kembery.

Local commentators have suggested various possible meanings over the years. One is a "meeting place"; others are "woman's breasts" and a hollow between them. These latter ideas are thought to come from the shapes of Black Mountain and Mount Ainslie, two hills of similar height that stand north-west and north-east of today's city centre.

During planning, proposals for the city's name included Austral, Aurora, Captain Cook, Eden and Yass-Canberra, among many others. In 1912 the government asked the public to suggest a name, and nearly 750 were put forward. At midday on 12 March 1913, Lady Denman, wife of Governor-General Lord Denman, announced at a ceremony on Kurrajong Hill that the city would be named Canberra. That hill has since become Capital Hill, the site of the present Parliament House.

Colonial settlement

The first British expedition to the area was led by Charles Throsby Smith in October 1820. Between 1820 and 1823 four more followed, and in June 1823 the explorer Mark John Currie produced the first accurate map. The area was by then known as the Limestone Plains.

Settlement by the British probably began late in 1823, when James Cowan, head stockman for Joshua John Moore, formed a sheep station on the land now known as the Acton Peninsula. Moore had been granted land in the region in 1823 and applied formally to buy the site on 16 December 1826. He called the property Canberry, and on 30 April 1827 a letter told him he could retain 1,000 acres.

Around 1825 the merchant Robert Campbell sent James Ainslie to start a sheep station here; a local Aboriginal girl of the Pialligo clan guided him to the region. The land became Campbell's, first called Pialligo and then given the Scottish name Duntroon. In 1832 the Campbells built a dairy there, now regarded as the oldest European building still standing in Canberra.

Other early colonists established estates too: Yarralumla in 1827 and Jerrabomberra in 1828. Springbank was established the year after Jerrabomberra, and its owner became the region's first British owner-occupier. St John the Baptist, an Anglican church in Reid, was consecrated in 1845 and is the oldest public building still standing in the city, and the city's first school opened beside it that year to teach the children of local settlers. As more Europeans came, the Indigenous population fell. Their society was destroyed, they were displaced from their lands, and introduced diseases including influenza, smallpox, alcoholism and measles took a heavy toll.

Choosing the capital

Talk of federation in the late 19th century began the district's shift from a rural part of New South Wales to the national capital. Sydney and Melbourne each contended for the role, and the argument ran long. The compromise was that the new capital would stand in New South Wales, no closer than 100 miles (160 km) to Sydney, and Melbourne would serve as the temporary seat of government until it was built.

A survey looked at several sites in New South Wales, among them Bombala, Orange, Yass, Albury, Tumut and Dalgety. Federal parliament chose Dalgety, and the Seat of Government Act 1904 confirmed it as the site, but New South Wales refused to cede the required territory. In 1906 the state government agreed to give up land if the site lay in the Yass-Canberra region, nearer to Sydney.

A newspaper proprietor named John Gale sent a pamphlet arguing for Canberra to members of every parliament in the Commonwealth, state and federal alike. Many accounts call the pamphlet decisive, along with survey work by the government surveyor Charles Scrivener, in the choice of Canberra as the site in 1908. The district passed to the federal government in 1911, when the Federal Capital Territory was established.

An international design competition closed on 31 January 1912 with 137 valid entries, after the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Institution of Civil Engineers boycotted it, as did affiliated bodies across the British Empire. The minister responsible, King O'Malley, insisted that the final decision would be his to make, not a planning expert's, and the winning design was the one submitted by Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin, who worked in Chicago, after O'Malley backed the majority view of his advisory board. Their plan, influenced by the garden city movement, used geometric shapes tied to features of the site, among them City Hill, Capital Hill, Mount Ainslie and Black Mountain.

Building the capital and self-government

An advisory board reported that it could not support the Griffins' plan as it stood and proposed a composite alternative, formally approved in January 1913. In the end the Griffin plan was the one followed, and construction began that year. A Royal Commission in 1916 found that officials had usurped Griffin's authority, and funding was so short that little had been done by the time he was dismissed in 1920.

The Commonwealth government bought the Yarralumla estate in 1913 as an official residence for the Governor-General, and by 1927 the property was known as Government House. Parliament moved to Canberra on 9 May that year, when the Provisional Parliament House opened. Planned growth slowed in the depression of the 1930s and through World War II, and some projects from those years, including cathedrals, were never finished.

The National Capital Development Commission, formed in 1957 with executive powers, settled four decades of argument over the lake at the centre of Griffin's design; work on Lake Burley Griffin finished in 1964 after four years. Building in Woden Valley and Belconnen started in the 1960s, and Tuggeranong followed in the mid-1970s.

A larger, permanent Parliament House opened on Capital Hill on 9 May 1988, during Australia's bicentenary, and in December that year the Australian Capital Territory gained full self-government. The first election followed on 4 March 1989, and a 17-member Legislative Assembly met at temporary offices in Civic on 11 May 1989. Bushfires on 18 January 2003 engulfed parts of the city, killing four people, injuring 435 and destroying more than 500 homes.

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Living in Canberra

Canberra sits roughly 150 km inland from the east coast, with the Brindabella Ranges to its south and west. Those ranges make up the northern end of the Australian Alps. Canberra's built-up area stands at roughly 580 m above sea level, with Mount Majura, Mount Taylor, Mount Ainslie and Black Mountain among the nearby hills. The Molonglo River flows across the Molonglo plain and has been dammed to form Lake Burley Griffin.

As the seat of the federal government, the city holds Parliament House, Government House and the High Court building, along with other institutions of national significance: the Australian War Memorial, the National Museum, the National Gallery, the National Library and the Royal Australian Mint. Important Australian Defence Force institutions also stand here, including the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Royal Military College Duntroon. Annual events include Floriade, the Enlighten Festival and the National Multicultural Festival, and the city's main sporting venues are Manuka Oval and Canberra Stadium.

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Questions

What is the population of Canberra?: The Australian Capital Territory had 453,890 people in 2021, with a median age of 35.
What is the history of Canberra?: The area was home to the Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri peoples long before British settlement began in the 1820s. It was chosen as the national capital in 1908 and formally named Canberra in 1913, and the Griffins' design shaped the city that grew after parliament moved here in 1927.
What is living in Canberra like?: Canberra is an entirely planned city on the Molonglo plain, with Lake Burley Griffin at its centre and hills such as Mount Ainslie and Black Mountain nearby. It holds the national institutions of government, museums and galleries, and hosts annual events such as Floriade.
What are Canberra's demographics?: In 2021 the Australian Capital Territory had a median age of 35. In the city, 28.7% of inhabitants were reported as born overseas.

Canberra real estate