Ainslie

Ainslie is a leafy suburb of Canberra, Australia in the North Canberra district.

Ainslie is a leafy suburb of Canberra, Australia in the North Canberra district.

The suburb is bounded by Limestone Avenue and Majura Avenue to the west and north, Phillip Avenue to the north-east, Mount Ainslie to the east and Quick Street to the south.

Ainslie is within walking distance of the City, the nature trails of Mount Ainslie, the Australian War Memorial and the many restaurants of Dickson. It has many attractions:a central location, with equally easy access to the CBD and the bush trails of Mount Ainslie; the abundance of charming early twentieth-century, heritage-listed houses; mature deciduous street trees and general leafiness; and a vibrant local shopping centre.

The suburb was named after James Ainslie, a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, the "first overseer of 'Duntroon Station' in Canberra who was employed by Robert Campbell in 1825 to drive a mob of sheep south from Bathurst 'until he found suitable land'; Ainslie chose the Limestone Plains (the Canberra district) and was overseer for ten years before returning to Scotland."James Ainslie was reputed to have camped in 1825 under gum trees at what is now Corroboree Park. Iris Carnell, born in 1900 and one of the original inhabitants of Paterson Street in the 1920s, recounted in 'Voices of Old Ainslie' that her mother, Celia Tong, born at Lanyon in 1871, remembered as a little girl what is now Corroboree Park as a scene of aboriginal corroborees. She said the aborigines used to sit around the tree now near the barbecues which has four trees growing from its centre.Ainslie has three housing precincts planned on Garden City principles that were gazetted onto the ACT Government's Heritage Register in 2004. The first stage of the Corroboree Park precinct was constructed between 1925 and 1927 to accommodate tradesmen for the construction of the city. The Alt Crescent precinct was designed for the members of the Federal Capital Commission and built in 1926. The houses were originally occupied by the founding staff of the FCC. The curved street design appears to derive from Walter Burley Griffin's original plan for Canberra which shows a small crescent off Limestone Avenue at the end of Ainslie Avenue. The first stage of the Wakefield Gardens precinct was constructed between 1925 and 1929 to accommodate lower income public servants and workmen for the opening of the new Parliament House in Canberra in 1927.The division (or suburb) name Ainslie was gazetted by the Government in 1928. The streets of Ainslie are named after pioneers and legislators.Iris Carnell also records that when the then-Duke and Duchess of York came to Canberra to open Parliament House in 1927, the Duchess, later Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother, expressed an interest in visiting a typical local family.She was invited to tea with the Truesdale family at 20 Corroboree Park (on the northern corner of Higgins Crescent).Originally a predominantly blue-collar suburb with a high proportion of public housing, Ainslie has gradually gentrified, with properties regularly fetching more than $1 million. Perhaps paradoxically, among the most sought-after properties in the suburb are the heritage-listed cottages built during the conservative governments of Stanley Bruce and Joseph Lyons, which are set mainly among European trees.