History Lesson - James Ainslie and Robert Campbell

Gulp!

Just don’t drive too slowly through the Causeway.

A perfect circle would have been kind of cool. I can’t say I blame the guy for quitting. Why did they bother to accept his plan if they couldn’t afford to build it?

I never realised there was so much I didn’t know about my own city, or that there was even anything to know.

I might take a drive out there one day and have a look around. I have always had an affinity for antiques and historical buildings. They seem to have more soul to them somehow.

The Causeway as we know it now is a suburb next to the new Kingston Foreshore development. Its roads are laid out in a grid like manor much like Hall and the centre of Queanbeyan are. This layout was the standard model for cities in those days. Originally Griffin called the area Eastlake along with adjacent Narabundah, Kingston and Griffith. The government later renamed the areas, however residence of the Causeway sometimes stated their postcode as Kingston as the Causeway did not have a good reputation.

The Causeway was created to house the workers to build the new capital of Australia and this is why the Causeway, the Power House and the end of the train line are so close to each other. The houses were low cost wooden building, relocated form other areas. Before being relocated, the purpose of the houses were as decoy villages for expected bombing raids during the war. Eventually the houses were replaced with brick ones. Most of the houses are government owned.

The light rail to civic was a temporary line built on a temporary bridge. It did not last long as it was made of wood with poor foundations. The bridges piers were incorrectly aligned against the river flow and so the first flood washed away all of the piers. The train tracks survived the flood and spent some time suspended in mid air with all of the sleepers still attached. Eventually it came down as well. They never rebuilt the bridge. They used the same excuse that they still use today in that they believe nobody will use it.

Hugo, I did some digging and found that the light rail bridge and the foot bridge were separate constructions. The foot bridge was “a raised footpath supported in the marshy spots by a steel frame”. You are lucky to have seen this part of Canberra’s history. It seems now days if something is more than fifty yeas old then it needs to be torn down, unlike more mature cities that chooses to preserve their history for future generations.

Gosh, I didn’t even know there was a place called the Causeway, let alone a bridge. From the map I can’t even work out where they would have put it. I didn’t know there was a rail link to Civic either.

The Causeway was a wooden footbridge. Whether this was the remanent of the rail link to Civic I am not sure, but I think that was further down the river and washed away in a flood. I remember a weir close to where the King’s avenue bridge is now, that also always seemed to get washed away. I remember the footbridge because we used to swim in the river there, regardless of the toxicity and I got a huge splinter in my foot from the old wood, which was bravely removed with his pocket knife by my mate Billy. There was another weir across the river just below Black Mountain, a good place for picnics.

Granny,

According to Wiki: “generally a causeway refers to a roadway supported mostly by earth or stone, while a bridge supports a roadway between piers…”.

If you look as Griffins’ original plan, he wanted Eastlake (East Basin) to be a perfect circle in shape. To achieve this he needed to build up an embankment on the eastern side of the body of water. He also wanted the embankment to act as a weir, forming a new lake on the current Jerrabombra Wetlands area.

He liked grand avenues with symmetry connected by round-a-bouts or hexagons. The road which he named the Causeway formed one of these avenues connecting Russell behind the Australian American Memorial (Eagle on column) and the round-a-bout next to the Diplomat Hotel. The line of symmetry would have been between Mt Ainslie and along Telopea Park. The Causeway would form the mirror of the Federal Avenue (later renamed Kings Avenue). He planned for a road and rail path along the Causeway. Because of the cost of building the embankment the Government ditched Griffins’ plan. This probably contributed to the reason why he quit.

I still don’t know what a causeway is and I looked it up in the dictionary. Is it like a bridge?

did you know that there was actually a wooden causeway across the Molonglo?

Hugo, when you say a wooden causeway are you talking about the light rail system that ran between Civic and the Powerhouse?

In the thirties and forties, Ainslie was definitely the suburb for the working classes although one up on the Causeway (did you know that there was actually a wooden causeway across the Molonglo?)and was looked down upon by those sniffy snobs in Forrest. Now that lovely old lady (vide CT today)will be able to move out after 60 years there leaving a nice little earner, thank you. There must be hope for Palmerston yet!