Rediscovering Ginninderra - on-line!

18 February 2017

The time is 1930. The place is the road into Hall crossing Halls Creek. What is going on?

The Centre's latest digital display - 'Rediscovering Ginninderra' - was launched on Monday 14th November. It follows the exhibition of that name which opened in April as part of the annual ACT and District Heritage Festival. Visitors can still view the exhibition.

Initial responses to the new digital display have been enthusiastic:

"This is a great initiative. Well done all!"
".....a fabulous resource. Well done".
"looks amazing. Well done!"
"It will be a very valuable resource for the Catchment".
"congratulations on the online version of the Gininderrra exhibition – it looks very good. Our family......are very pleased with the result"

The new display is a database of Ginninderra People and Places that enables the viewer to explore the links that interconnect them. These entries (around 250 People and 45 Places) are illustrated with nearly 200 images, and are well referenced. Zoomable map or satellite imagery enables precise location of Places, and the database is fully searchable. There are also hyperlinks throughout the pages to other web resources, making this a useful portal for anyone exploring the history of Ginninderra.

The digital display has been co-edited over the past six months by Alastair Crombie and James McDonald, greatly helped by contributions from others - especially descendants of pioneer families. The database draws on the wide-ranging research of Canberra historian Lyall Gillespie, and particularly his 1992 book 'Ginninderra. Forerunner to Canberra'. The Centre is now the custodian of his research collection, and will continue to give priority to making it accessible to the public.

The broad scope of 'Rediscovering Ginninderra' is the catchment of the Ginninderra Creek during the century of European settlement from the 1820's to the aftermath of the establishment of the Capital Territory. While the Gillespie collection includes a substantial number of stone artefacts, and aboriginal occupation of the area goes back some 25,000 years, 'Rediscovering Ginninderra' does not try to tell the story of aboriginal habitation and custodianship.

Rediscovering Ginninderra on-line is launched in the spirit and wikipedia. We are quite sure that our coverage can be enhanced, and errors corrected, if viewers are willing and able to contact us. The launch now does not mean at all that we think the task is finished, rather it is time to seek help from others!