Westlake: Canberra's Ghost Suburb

Westlake's ghostly gums

This week, I have been thinking a lot about the past. On Monday morning, I had the opportunity to hear Scottish archaeologist, Neil Oliver, open the History Teachers Association of Australia annual conference. In his lovely lilting Scottish accent, he encouraged teachers to help their students make personal connections to the past, to encourage them to view past events as being part of their own lives, things that echo through the generations. [You can listen to his public lecture at the National Library here.]

As this week also marked the 98th commemoration of the landing at Gallipoli, with it's documentaries and live broadcasts, it wasn't difficult to remember that the past is always shadowing the present.

On ANZAC Day, we decided to go for a walk into Canberra's past, in the forgotten suburb of Westlake. I've lived in this city for 30 years now and until a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't have told you where Westlake was. A chance taxi ride gave me the opportunity to spot a sign on a bend in Empire Circuit and my colleague, Fiona, mentioned that a stroll through Westlake was interesting.

The roadside sign for Westlake

Westlake was a campsite that grew into a suburb as a result of the growth of Canberra. Workers came and set up their tents, some built cottages for their families, all probably dreaming of creating new lives for themselves in this still to be imagined city. And it turns out to be a fitting place to spend ANZAC Day. Paul Daley, in his book Canberra (New South Books, 2012), notes that many of the workers who came to help build the city were veterans of the First World War. There must have been times when, in the dry, dusty summers and the freezing Canberra winters, they wondered what on earth they had been fighting for.

Today, almost nothing remains of the suburb's physical inhabitants, although the 'children of Westlake' have erected small bronze plaques to commemorate their childhoods. It's a loving attempt to remind the city's current and future residents that the place now called Stirling Park was once home to 700 people. There's a small display of faded photographs as you enter the suburb and if you look around you as you walk, you can spot plaques noting the location of cottages and humpies and reminding us of the names of people who lived there: Bell, Belchamber, Ghiradello, Haines, Austin, Campbell, Day, O'Rourke.

The plaques at the entrance to Westlake

Daley notes that by the 1960s all of the buildings in Westlake had been demolished and half the suburb was submerged when Lake Burley Griffin was finally filled. Today, the only building left on the site is the sewer tower, a pungent reminder of the suburb's previous occupants.

Westlake's sewer tower

When I moved in 1982 from Sydney to Canberra, my teenage self railed against my new city's newness. Where were the historic buildings, the remnants of the colonial past? I soon discovered Blundell's Cottage, Lanyon and eventually Calthorpe's House, all three historic buildings turned into museums. But I was missing, I think, the living past - the streets of downtrodden terrace houses, the Rocks alive with history and commerce, the suburbs celebrating their colonial roots (Parramatta, Windsor). All I could see were smart new suburbs.

I'm not sure that in the intervening years Canberra has become any better at honouring it's heritage, black or white, even in this centenary year. We are good at layering the new on top of the no-longer-needed - who now remembers where Monaro Mall or the old Canberra Hotel used to stand? But in reading around to write this post, I've unearthed a number of people who are trying to remember the past and to share the stories of this city.

If you'd like to know more about Westlake, you can go for a stroll, read Paul Daley's Canberra, or explore some of the online histories, such as Dave's ACT and Hidden Canberra.