We visited Canberra last weekend as a surprise for our younger daughter’s birthday. While we were there we had a family day out at one of the historical properties in the Australian Capital Territory. There are not many historical properties as the ACT has a very short history in the scheme of things as Canberra was built as a planned city for the capital of the country.
The place we visited was Lanyon Homestead.
The homestead is now on the edge of the outer suburbs of Canberra. You are literally one minute in the suburbs then round the corner in the countryside. When we used to live in Canberra it was a fairly long trip from our suburb out to Lanyon and we were in one of the outer suburbs. That was many years ago and Canberra has grown considerably since then.
It was lovely to revisit Lanyon as we used to take our children there. Now there is a cafe in one of the outbuildings
and the homestead is manned by staff who will give guided tours if asked. We had gone to have a birthday lunch at the cafe as well as doing a tour of the estate.
One aspect that we remembered that is no longer there was the Sidney Nolan Gallery. The gallery had been there for 27 years but in 2007 it was decided that the gallery was no longer suitable for such a valuable collection. This is rather sad as the collection was housed in a rural setting at the request of the artist. Now the collection is housed in the Canberra Museum and Gallery.
You can read about what prompted this move at Yolande Norris.
Gippsland Granny 