Haig Park celebrates 101 years as Braddon's ... windbreak?

The party had to be postponed last year due to the sopping wet weather, so this Saturday (3 February), Haig Park in Braddon will celebrate its 101st birthday.

There’ll be a mini version of the regular Haig Park Village Markets, complete with stalls of pre-loved goods, a stage set up for music and dance presentations, and a variety of “inclusive activities for people big and small”.

The City Renewal Authority will also officially declare the ‘Ngala Logs’ open, a collection of carved and polished logs designed for seating.

Associate Professor Dr Cathy Hope from the University of Canberra’s Faculty of Arts and Design led an effort to breathe new life into the park with a series of “experiments” in 2019 and says the party is an opportunity to celebrate Haig Park as “a place for all Canberrans … whether you are going to the markets, walking your dog, reading under a tree or having a picnic with friends”.

It’s clear from the need for experiments that no one was quite sure what to do with the collection of 7000 trees at the end of Braddon. And there’s a simple reason why – Haig Park wasn’t actually designed to be a ‘park’.

Nick Swain is the secretary of the Canberra and District Historical Society and says it started life as the ‘East-West Shelter Belt’.

“In those days, there was a really cold westerly wind that used to come through,” he says.

Thomas Charles Weston, a horticulturalist from England (after whom Weston Park is named), was in charge of the city’s parks and gardens in the early 20th century, and the region’s surveyor, Charles Scrivener (after whom Scrivener Dam is named), warned him of the need to provide some shelter to the houses being built in Ainslie and Braddon.

Weston heeded the advice and between 1921 and 1923 planted 12 rows of trees over a 1780 by 120-metre patch of land on Canberra’s northern edge. Another two rows – one on either side – were classified as street trees.

“But instead of just planting a whole bunch of trees – which he could have done – he put in a whole range of different exotic species to give it more variety and match the rest of the ‘Garden City’ look,” Nick says.

These species included Argyle apple, snow gum, pin oak, Arizona ash, Italian cypress, Deodar cedar, Monterey pine and Desert ash, many arranged by row.

At the same time, Weston oversaw another belt along Wentworth Avenue to shelter the Kingston Powerhouse, but few of these trees remain.

The East-West Shelter Belt held its name until 1928 when Nick says there was a push to finalise names around Canberra rather than hanging onto those given by Walter Burley Griffin.

“Things were being called by different names, so for example, Limestone Avenue was then called Canberra Avenue, and what we now know as Canberra Avenue was Wellington Avenue.”

The park was named after Earl Haig, commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) during World War I. He served during the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, the German Spring Offensive and the Hundred Days Offensive, the last of which ultimately led to the armistice in 1918 and is considered one of the greatest victories ever achieved by a British-led army.

However, Haig Park wasn’t actually officially gazetted as a public park until decades later, in 1987.

“I think that’s just when they caught up with various regulations and things like that just before self-government,” Nick says.

It was then added to the ACT Heritage Register in 2000, where it’s sure to stay, even if it’s slightly awkward as a park.

“It was never built as a public park, so it’s fairly difficult to wedge things into it,” Nick says.

“You have to do it in strips of marquees along pathways because there’s no wide gathering space for events … But it’s clear from what’s happening with these celebrations that the public really recognises it as an important resource to have in inner Canberra.”

Visit the Events ACT website for more information on Haig Park’s 101st birthday celebrations.