[First filed: July 31, 2009 @ 10:49]
When looking at old photographs of Canberra I’ll confess to wondering in the past “Where did the workers live?”
Yesterday I stumbled over the answer.
Nestled between the two ridges of Stirling Park, where they would never intrude on the sight lines of the great and the good are scant ruins of the old suburb and “sewer camp” of Westlake.
While not previously known to me it’s not as if Westlake has been forgotten.
Stateline did a feature on it back in 2004. The Canberra History Group has a page. Also the Wikipedia entry on Yarralumla has quite a bit about it.
Apparently 700 of the unwanted working class lived there in 1925, one fifth of the population of the Territory at the time.
If you head off from the Canberra Yacht Club over the ridge towards Yarralumla you’ll soon find yourself amongst concrete markers memorialising the buildings and some plaques.
So now we know.
(More pictures below)