Yarralumla () is a large inner south

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

, the capital city of Australia. Located approximately south-west of the

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

, Yarralumla extends along the south-west bank of Lake Burley Griffin from Scrivener Dam to Commonwealth Avenue. In 1828, Henry Donnison, a Sydney merchant, was granted a lease on the western side of Stirling Ridge. Donnison's land was named ''Yarralumla'' in a survey of the area conducted in 1834, apparently after the indigenous people's term for the area. It was also spelt ''Yarrolumla'' in other documents. In 1881, the estate was bought by Frederick Campbell, grandson of Robert Campbell who had built a house at nearby Duntroon. Frederick completed the construction of a large, gabled, brick house on his property in 1891 that now serves as the site of Government House, the official residence of the

Governor-General of Australia The governor-general of Australia is the representative of the monarch, currently King Charles III, in Australia.Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, who owned Yarralumla sheep station from 1837 to 1859, Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes, who owned the property from 1859 to 1881, and Augustus' father Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787–1873). The modern suburb of Yarralumla was gazetted by the government in 1928 and was home to approximately 3,120 people and many diplomatic missions. Notable locations include

Lennox Gardens Lennox Gardens, a park in Canberra, Australia, lying on the south side of Lake Burley Griffin, close to Commonwealth Avenue Bridge and Albert Hall in the suburb of Yarralumla. Before the construction of Lake Burley Griffin a road ran through ...

, the Albert Hall and the Hotel Canberra.

Parliament House Parliament House may refer to: Australia * Parliament House, Canberra, Parliament of Australia * Parliament House, Adelaide, Parliament of South Australia * Parliament House, Brisbane, Parliament of Queensland * Parliament House, Darwin, Parliame ...

and The Lodge lie just outside its boundary. Yarralumla is one of Canberra's most desirable and expensive residential suburbs because of its wide leafy streets, attractive lakeside setting and central location.

Geography

Yarralumla is located in the central Canberra district of South Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, a

federal territory A federal territory is an administrative division under the direct and usually exclusive jurisdiction of a federation's national government. A federal territory is a part of a federation, but not a part of any federated state. The states constit ...

. It is bordered by Lake Burley Griffin to the north, Commonwealth Avenue and Capital Hill to the east,

Adelaide Avenue Adelaide Avenue is a limited-access road in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. The road connects Government House, Canberra, Yarralumla with the Parliament House, Canberra, Parliament House area. Adelaide Avenue is a popular tourism, tour ...

and the Cotter Road to the south, and Scrivener Dam, Lady Denman Drive and part of the Molonglo River to the west. Its southeast corner abuts Capital Hill, the location of

. The Lodge lies across Adelaide Avenue near its eastern end. 300px, Map of Yarralumla, located south of Lake Burley Griffin The streets in Yarralumla are named after Australian governors and botanists. Most of the older streets in the suburb are laid out on an approximately

rectangular grid A regular grid is a tessellation of ''n''-dimensional Euclidean space by congruent parallelotopes (e.g. bricks). Its opposite is irregular grid. Grids of this type appear on graph paper and may be used in finite element analysis, finite volume ...

with some curved sections, while the more hilly eastern end of the suburb, including the embassy district, is set out with contour-guided roads. Major roads in Yarralumla include Banks Street, Novar Street and Hopetoun Circuit in a north–south direction and Schlich Street, Loftus Street and Weston Street running east–west. Being a

dormitory A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university s ...

suburb, there are no major through roads. Access to the rest of the city can be made from Adelaide Avenue, Commonwealth Avenue, Lady Denman Drive and Cotter Road, all of which run along the borders of the suburb. From these roads, entry to the suburb can be gained by turning into roads such as Coronation Drive, Hopetoun Circuit and Novar Street. Yarralumla has wide, tree-lined streets, most of which have been planted with exotic trees such as atlas cedars and

cherry plum Cherry plum may refer to: *The species '' Prunus cerasifera'' * Plum-cherry hybrids * ''Prunus'' × ''rossica'' cultivars {{disambig, plant ...

s on Banks Street, claret ashes on Loch Street, pin oaks on Schlich Street and English oaks and hawthorns on Weston Street, along with the indigenous white brittle gums on Empire Circuit and river oaks on Solander Place. Much of the area of Yarralumla consists of open space or non-residential development, including Weston and Stirling Parks, the

Royal Canberra Golf Club The Canberra Golf Club, later known as the Royal Canberra Golf Club, was formed in 1926. Its original grounds were behind the Hotel Canberra on the river flats on both sides of the Molonglo River. History The club's Club House was on a site ...

, and the grounds of Government House. Many houses are occupied by diplomatic missions. The embassy area of Yarralumla is located towards the eastern end of the suburb next to Stirling Park. It is the hilliest area of Yarralumla. The Parliamentary Triangle is located to its east. The residential areas of Yarralumla are located in the central and western areas of the suburb. The Yarralumla shops at the corner of Novar and Bentham Streets are in the centre of the western residential area, which has typically flat terrain and streets laid out in a rectangular grid, typically lined by exotic trees. This area has a blend of original weatherboard, monocrete and brick dwellings as well as some recently rebuilt detached houses, dual occupancies and units. Minimbah Court at the corner of Banks and Schlicht Streets is an example of Canberra’s earlier medium-density unit buildings. It was constructed in the 1950s and originally named Solander Court in line with nearby streets named after

First Fleet The First Fleet was a fleet of 11 ships that brought the first European and African settlers to Australia. It was made up of two Royal Navy vessels, three store ships and six convict transports. On 13 May 1787 the fleet under the command ...

botanists. There is an elongated reserve with a walking and bicycle path running in a southwards direction of the Yarralumla Oval, and to the east of this is the central area of the suburb, where the blocks are larger and the streets are more contoured due to the hilly terrain. There is a mixture of housing types in this region, with some larger two-storey houses, and more expansive gardens. The streets in this part of the suburb are typically lined with native trees. Yarralumla is located on the Yarralumla Formation which is a

mudstone Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from '' shale'' by its lack of fissility (parallel layering).Blatt, H., and R.J. Tracy, 1996, ''Petrology. ...

siltstone Siltstone, also known as aleurolite, is a clastic sedimentary rock that is composed mostly of silt. It is a form of mudrock with a low clay mineral content, which can be distinguished from shale by its lack of fissility.Blatt ''et al.'' 1980, p ...

formation that was formed around 425 million years ago during the Silurian Period. The formation extends from Red Hill and Woden in the South to Lake Burley Griffin in to the north, passing under the suburb of Yarralumla. The formation is evidence of the last major marine sedimentary period when eastern Australia was still covered by shallow seas. It shows fossil evidence of trilobites, coral and primitive crinoids. The Yarralumla brickworks quarry and the Deakin anticline are places where the formation is exposed and easily studied.

History

European settlement

Like the rest of Canberra, Yarralumla forms part of the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people. The area now called Yarralumla is part of two original land grants made to free settlers for the establishment of farms. In 1828 Henry Donnison, a Sydney merchant who had arrived on the brig ''Ellen'' with his wife and family on 29–30 July 1828, was granted an allotment on the western side of Stirling Ridge. The name 'Yarralumla' was first used on a map by the surveyor Robert Dixon in 1829. A second grant was made to William Klensendorlffe (a German who had served in the British Navy and arrived free in the Colony in 1818), who had bought the land from John Stephen, on 7 March 1839. Donnison's land was named ''Yarralumla'' in a survey of the area conducted in 1834. ''Yarralumla'' or ''Yarrowlumla'' was a name used by the local people for the Mount Stromlo ridge, which lies to the west of the current suburb. It is said to mean "echo mountain". An area to the west of what is now the suburb was the Yarrolumla parish. The prominent New South Wales parliamentarian Sir Terence Aubrey Murray (1810–1873) purchased Yarralumla in 1837. He lived there with his wife Mary (née Gibbes, 1817–1858), the second daughter of the Collector of Customs for New South Wales, Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787–1873), MLC. Murray settled Yarralumla and part of Winderradeen (near Collector) on his wife in trust so that they would have some property if he became bankrupt. On his wife's death in 1858 Yarralumla passed in trust to her father and her brother Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes (1828–1897). In May 1859, Augustus' parents came to live with him at Yarralumla homestead. Augustus Gibbes improved the estate and acquired additional land by purchase and lease. In 1881, he sold Yarralumla for 40,000 pounds to Frederick Campbell, a descendant of Robert Campbell, to travel overseas. Frederick Campbell erected a new, three-storey, brick house on the site of the former Yarralumla homestead at the beginning of the 1890s. Campbell's house would later form the basis of what is now the Governor-General of Australia's official Canberra residence, known colloquially as "Yarralumla" or "Government House". Campbell also built the large wooden Yarralumla Woolshed nearby in 1904. In 1908, the Limestone Plains area, including Yarralumla, was selected as the site for the capital city of the newly established Commonwealth of Australia and in 1913 the Commonwealth Government purchased the property. Tenant farmers were allowed to stay on the land on annual leases, some remaining until 1963 when the Molonglo River was dammed to form Lake Burley Griffin.

Development

With the construction of Australia's capital city underway, the

Yarralumla brickworks The Yarralumla brickworks, also known as the Commonwealth Brickworks, was one of the earliest construction projects in Canberra, Australia. It was built in the suburb of Yarralumla to produce the bricks used to build many of Canberra's early bu ...

were established in 1913 to supply building material. The bricks were used for many of Canberra's buildings, including the provisional Parliament House. The Brickworks tramway, a 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) goods railway, was constructed for the transportation of bricks to some of the major building sites in central Canberra. This linked the brickworks to places such as Parliament House, and the

Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the five most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...

Power House. Construction on the Commonwealth nursery and Westbourne Woods

arboretum An arboretum (plural: arboreta) in a general sense is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, man ...

was started in 1914, and a temporary camp was built near the brickworks to accommodate the workers.

Thomas Charles Weston Charles Weston , born Thomas Charles George Weston (14 October 1866 – 1 December 1935) was an Australian horticulturist and was responsible for the afforestation of Canberra. Weston was born in Middlesex, England. He trained as a horticulturis ...

was Officer-in-Charge (Afforestation Branch) in the years 1913 to 1926, and later became Director of City Planting and the Superintendent of Parks and Gardens. Weston was responsible for testing and selecting plant species at the arboretum for their suitability to Canberra's environment; from 1913 through to 1924 Weston oversaw the propagation of more than two million trees which were then planted in the Canberra area. Most of the original Westbourne Woods arboretum is now leased to the

, with the remainder forming part of Weston Park. The Yarralumla nursery is still active, albeit on a smaller scale and functioning as a retail nursery selling both wholesale and direct to the public. In 1917, the designer of Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin, named the area surrounding the brickworks "Westridge". It was part of the original Griffin plan, and the objective was to provide a 'horticultural suburb' and a 'society suburb'. In Griffin's 1918 document ''Canberra: Plan of City and Environs'', the suburb is shown as an isosceles triangle with two equal length roads leading from Capital Hill to Yarralumla Bay and Clianthus Centre respectively. The latter road is now to location of the arterial

, and Yarralumla Bay and Clianthus Centre was to be joined along a north-south axis by Novar Avenue (originally to be named Mountain Way), extending all the way to the future lake bearing Griffin's name. Griffin's vision was for Westridge to become a business centre with an urban waterfront and promenade, complemented by the bush surroundings. Griffin's design was based on a strict hierarchy with core services such as housing, communal space and facilities such health and education, and commercial space. These would be connected outward by boulevards linking to transport routes and trams. By 1928, there were over 130 people on the electoral roll for Westridge. The majority of the population consisted of men working at the brickworks and nursery. The suburb was gazetted as Yarralumla on 20 September 1928. Yarralumla nursery from the air with the Molonglo River in the background, taken in 1923 In 1922, a workers' tent camp was erected on the eastern side of Stirling Ridge to house the men working on the main intercepting sewer. The following year saw the start of the construction of 62 small, four-room, unlined timber cottages, to be used as housing for the married tradesmen involved in the construction of the provisional Parliament House. Other camps were established at the eastern end of Stirling Park on the hills opposite modern Lotus Bay. The first of these was contractor John Howie's settlement (1922–1930), consisting of 25 timber cottages for his married men and timber barracks (Hostel Camp) for his single men. Two other single men's tent camps were established nearby—Old Tradesmen's Camp (1923–1927) and No 1 Labourers Camp (1924–1927). The men from Howie's worked on the Hotel Canberra and the others on the construction of the provisional Parliament House and nearby administrative buildings. The Stirling Park camps were known as Westlake to their new inhabitants, and previously "Gura Bung Dhaura" (stony ground) to the local

Aboriginal Aborigine, aborigine or aboriginal may refer to: *Aborigines (mythology), in Roman mythology * Indigenous peoples, general term for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area *One of several groups of indigenous peoples, see ...

people. In 1925, the population of this temporary suburb was 700. This represented roughly one-fifth of the total population of the Federal Capital Territory at the time. In 1956, the Department of Interior decided to clear the settlement so that embassies could be built. In 1960, the member of parliament for the ACT, Jim Fraser, described Westlake as one of two "hidden valleys of disgrace, which are never shown to tourists and are seen by visitors only by chance". The Commonwealth and the states agreed in 1911 that Australia needed adequately-trained foresters, although they did not agree to establish a forestry school until 1920. Prime minister Stanley Bruce promised to fund it during the 1925 election campaign and construction of the Commonwealth Forestry School commenced in 1926 at Westridge near the brickworks and Westbourne Woods. The now heritage-listed Forestry School and the associated principal's residence Westridge House are located on Banks Street, Yarralumla. The school was initially established in March 1926 at the University of Adelaide under the leadership of

Charles Lane Poole Charles Edward Lane Poole (16 August 1885 – 22 November 1970) was an English Australian forester who introduced systematic, science-based forestry practices to various parts of the Commonwealth, most notably Australia. Biography Early life an ...

. After the move to Canberra Lane-Poole acted as principal until 1944. Its permanent building in Yarralumla was designed by Federal Capital Commission architects J.H. Kirkpatrick, and H.M. Rolland. It is built in the Inter-War

Stripped Classical Stripped Classicism (or "Starved Classicism" or "Grecian Moderne") Jstor is primarily a 20th-century classicist architectural style stripped of most or all ornamentation, frequently employed by governments while designing official buildings. I ...

style as a single storey rendered brick building with a parapet and a

hipped In vertebrate anatomy, hip (or "coxa"Latin ''coxa'' was used by Celsus in the sense "hip", but by Pliny the Elder in the sense "hip bone" (Diab, p 77) in medical terminology) refers to either an anatomical region or a joint. The hip region ...

tiled roof. Various Australian woods, including Queensland maple and walnut (Cryptocarya palmerstonii), red cedar, red mahogany,

hoop pine ''Araucaria cunninghamii'' is a species of ''Araucaria'' known as hoop pine. Other less commonly used names include colonial pine, Queensland pine, Dorrigo pine, Moreton Bay pine and Richmond River pine. The scientific name honours the botanist ...

and mountain ash, were used throughout the building. It opened in April 1927 and it was completed in June. Due to financial stringency during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

and other priorities during the Second World War, it had few students in its first years. The Forestry School was absorbed by the Australian National University in 1965 and forestry courses are now carried out at its main campus in

Acton Acton may refer to: Places Antarctica * Mount Acton Australia * Acton, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb of Canberra * Acton, Tasmania, a suburb of Burnie * Acton Park, Tasmania, a suburb of Hobart, Tasmania, formerly known as Acton Canada ...

Material was copied from this source, which is available under
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia (CC BY 3.0 AU) license
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Forestry and Forestry Products subsumed the school in 1975. Westridge House, an impressive

Tudor-style Tudor Revival architecture (also known as mock Tudor in the UK) first manifested itself in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture ...

structure, was completed in January 1928. CC-BY icon

Material was copied from this source, which is available under
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia (CC BY 3.0 AU) license
It underwent a A$500,000 refurbishment and was later used as a residence for the chief officer of the CSIRO. The former Forestry School and Westridge House are now leased out by the CSIRO.

After World War II

The current geographical boundary of Yarralumla was finalised in the early 1960s with the construction of Scrivener Dam, over which Lady Denman Drive passes, allowing for the Molonglo River to be dammed, creating Lake Burley Griffin. Construction began in September 1960 and the dam was locked on 20 September 1963. The lake reached the planned level on 29 April 1964.Sparke, p. 141. On 17 October 1964, Prime Minister Sir

Robert Menzies The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of ''Hrōþ, Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory ...

commemorated the filling of the lake. Yarralumla was expanded to include Westlake, which had up until then been part of

. After the Second World War, the suburb began to expand rapidly with the construction of many private homes. Yarralumla's image as a lower-class suburb would persist into the 1960s and 1970s. This general perception began to alter once Lake Burley Griffin had been created and its surrounds landscaped into parklands; the area soon gained a reputation for its attractive lakeside location. During the 1980s, house prices began to rise coincident with a rejuvenation of the suburb. Many of the original government-built monocrete, brick, and weatherboard houses have been demolished and replaced by larger dwellings of a variety of more modern styles and materials, although this process was more advanced in the central part of the suburb than in its east in 2004.

Demographics

The population of the Westridge area on the 1928 electoral roll numbered over 130. At the , Yarralumla had a population of 3,120 people. Of these 47.9% were male. The suburb had only 0.9% indigenous Australians, below the national average of 3.2%. The percentage of married people in the suburb was 12 points higher than the national average, and the proportion of residents who had never married was 10 points lower. The higher level of marriage did not translate into a higher level of children; 49.6% of families consisted of a couple without children in the household, compared to the national average of 38.8%. Yarralumla residents had a median age of 50, compared to a Canberra average of 35. The suburb had an older population for a city of young people; the median national age is 38 and 43.5% of Yarralumla residents were 55 or over, compared to the national figure of 29.1%. Yarralumla is a comparatively wealthy suburb with a 2021 median weekly personal income of $1,591; this compares to the figure of $1,203 for the entire Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and $805 for all of Australia. The public service or defence force employed around 20.8% of the workforce, somewhat less than the ACT average of 22.9%. This compared to 1.8% for Australia as a whole. The higher incomes were derived from the suburb's white-collar base; 68.0% of Yarralumla's workforce was employed as professionals or in managerial posts, compared to 37.7% nationally. In contrast, only 2.9% were engaged in blue-collar occupations, compared with 15.3% for the nation as a whole. The proportion of the population working as tradesmen and technicians was almost four times lower than average across Australia. The proportion of people with a university degree, 57.0%, is higher than the ACT and national averages of 42.9% and 26.3% respectively. The median monthly housing loan repayments in Yarralumla in 2021 were $3,425, compared to the ACT figure of $2,080 and a federal average of $1,863. At $547, the weekly rent was more than 40% higher than the national average. Yarralumla's median house price was about $1.5m in 2020 versus $1.2m for the inner south and $720,000 for the whole of the ACT. The rate of home ownership in the suburb was 47.8%—much higher than the national average of 31.0%. 23.0% of the households rented. Accommodation was mostly separate houses (65.1%), although the number of residences in the suburb has been increasing through conversion of blocks to dual occupancy and other medium-density-type developments. Despite this, only 7.5% of residences were apartments or units, slightly more than half of the national average. The population of Yarralumla in 2021 was predominantly Australian-born, with some 67.8% of its residents being born in Australia. The second most prevalent birthplace was England at 5.1%, followed by India and the United States with 2.2% and 2.1% respectively. The suburb was more oriented towards the Anglo-Celtic majority than the rest of Australia; English was spoken at home by 79.3% of the population, compared to the national average of 72.0%. Every other language was spoken by less than 3% of the population. Mandarin, Italian, Hindi, Spanish and Vietnamese were all spoken by at least 0.8% of the population. The most popular religious affiliations in descending order were no religion, Roman Catholic,

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

and

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

. The proportion of the population professing to having no religion was 42.5%, higher than the national average of 38.4%, but below the ACT average of 43.5%.

Suburb amenities

The Yarralumla local shopping centre is located on the corner of Bentham and Novar Streets. It contains a

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earli ...

, dry-cleaners, chemist, gift shop, restaurants and speciality shops. Weston Park is situated on a peninsula near the western end of Lake Burley Griffin. The park includes swimming areas, children's play equipment and wading pools, and a miniature railway, and is a popular

barbecue Barbecue or barbeque (informally BBQ in the UK, US, and Canada, barbie in Australia and braai in South Africa) is a term used with significant regional and national variations to describe various cooking methods that use live fire and smoke t ...

spot on weekends. Weston Park forms part of a string of parks that line the southern shore of Lake Burley Griffin; other parks include Yarralumla Bay,

(incorporating a Japanese garden named Canberra Nara Park) and Stirling Park. With its waterfront location on Lake Burley Griffin, Yarralumla Bay is the base of the Canberra Rowing Club, ANU Sailing Club, the

Australian Institute of Sport The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) is a high performance sports training institution in Australia. The Institute's headquarters were opened in 1981 and are situated in the northern suburb of Bruce, Canberra. The AIS is a division of the ...

Rowing Centre and the YMCA Sailing Club, while the Southern Cross Yacht Club is based at Lotus Bay opposite Lennox Gardens. Yarralumla Neighbourhood Oval is adjacent to the suburb's primary school as well as a community hall and some tennis courts. Yarralumla's only scheduled public transport is provided by ACTION buses. Route 57 provides a service from Yarralumla to Woden and

City A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

Interchanges along Novar Street, Schlich Street and Hopetoun Circuit. The business case for the proposed second stage of the Capital Metro light rail system that was released in 2019 included stops at Albert Hall on Commonwealth Avenue on the eastern edge of Yarralumla and at the intersections of Adelaide Avenue with Hopetoun Circuit and with Novar and Kent streets on the southern edge. Yarralumla is home to three places of worship: St Peter Chanel's on the corner of Weston and Loch Streets, Yarralumla Uniting Church on Denman Street, and the Canberra Mosque on Empire Circuit.

Education

Yarralumla's first school, the Catholic St Peter Chanel's Primary School, opened in 1956; it closed in the 1990s. Yarralumla Primary School, a public school, opened in 1957. The Montessori preschool on Loftus Street is a preschool and Little Lodge on Macgillivray Street is a day care facility. There are no secondary schools in Yarralumla. The zoned government high school (Years 7–10) is Alfred Deakin High School in the adjoining suburb of Deakin to the south and the zoned senior secondary college (Years 11–12) is Narrabundah College, several kilometres to the southeast. Nearby private schools are

Canberra Girls Grammar School , motto_translation = To the young, anything is possible , established = 1926 , type = Independent, day and boarding , gender = Co-educational – Early Learning to Yr 3Girls – Yrs ...

and

Canberra Grammar School , motto_translation = For God, for Church, for Country , city = Red Hill , state = Australian Capital Territory , country = Australia , coordinates = , type ...

in Deakin and Red Hill respectively. The Canberra Japanese Supplementary School Inc., a Japanese weekend educational programme established in 1988, has its school office in the Japanese Embassy Consular Section in Yarralumla, and holds classes at Alfred Deakin High School.

Politics

Yarralumla is located within the federal electorate of

, which has been represented by Alicia Payne of the Labor Party in the House of Representatives since the 2019 election. In the

ACT Legislative Assembly The Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory (known in short as the ACT Legislative Assembly) is the unicameral legislature of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). It sits in the Legislative Assembly Building on Civic ...

, Yarralumla is part of the electorate of Murrumbidgee, which elects five members on the basis of proportional representation; as of 2020, the members are two Labor, two Liberal and one

Greens Greens may refer to: *Leaf vegetables such as collard greens, mustard greens, spring greens, winter greens, spinach, etc. Politics Supranational * Green politics * Green party, political parties adhering to Green politics * Global Greens * Europ ...

. Polling place statistics are shown to the right for the ''Yarralumla'' polling place at Yarralumla Primary School at the 2022 federal election and 2020 ACT elections. Only 655 votes were cast at the Yarralumla polling place in 2020 due to early voting at centralised polling places to avoid crowding in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notable places

Yarralumla has a large number of landmarks and places of historical interest. The

Governor-General Governor-general (plural ''governors-general''), or governor general (plural ''governors general''), is the title of an office-holder. In the context of governors-general and former British colonies, governors-general are appointed as viceroy t ...

's residence Government House, which shares the name ''Yarralumla'', is located at the western end of the suburb in of parkland. It sits alongside Lake Burley Griffin, next to the

and Scrivener Dam. The house was built in 1891 as the headquarters for the ''Yarralumla'' property. Also located alongside Scrivener Dam is the National Zoo & Aquarium. The nearby Yarralumla woolshed is available for event hire, often playing host to parties and bush dances. The land surrounding the woolshed has been developed as an equestrian park, including areas for showjumping, eventing and

endurance riding Endurance riding is an equestrian sport based on controlled long-distance races. It is one of the international competitions recognized by the FEI. There are endurance rides worldwide. Endurance rides can be any distance, though they are rare ...

. The Yarralumla brickworks were the first industrial manufacturing facility in the ACT; they were closed temporarily several times due to the

and both World Wars. Proposals to modernise the brickworks were rejected by the National Capital Development Commission in the early 1970s and they closed permanently in 1976; the site is closed to the public and is in a state of disrepair. The unfenced parkland around the brickworks is a popular recreation area for Yarralumla residents. As of 2020, residential development is proposed for the site, which is , to initially include 1,800 new dwellings, although the project has been scaled down. The eastern end of Yarralumla is home to many of the diplomatic missions in Canberra, many of which are built in a traditional style reflecting that of their respective home countries. Examples of regionally styled chanceries include the embassies of Saudi Arabia and Thailand, and the High Commissions of India and Papua New Guinea. The United States embassy was the first embassy built in Canberra, with the foundation stone laid on the Fourth of July, 1942. The embassy compound was built in a "typically American" Georgian style, using Australian materials, and was inspired by several buildings designed by

Christopher Wren Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS (; – ) was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches ...

for Virginia at the beginning of the 18th century. The French embassy includes the French-Australian War Memorial opened in 1961, which has a sculpture by André Bizette-Lindet called Winged Victory. Canberra tourist drives take tourists on a car-based tour past many of Canberra's embassies including those located in Yarralumla, zig-zagging through the eastern side of Yarralumla past many of the missions. The

, Yarralumla Yacht Club, Albert Hall and the Hotel Canberra are located in the eastern end of the suburb. Located on Commonwealth Avenue, the Hotel Canberra opened in 1924 to accommodate politicians when Parliament was in session; Prime Minister James Scullin stayed there to avoid the running costs of the official residence, The Lodge during the

. It has been heritage listed as an example of the distinctive Garden-Pavilion style of architect John Smith Murdoch in line with the garden city design of Burley Griffin. The hotel was closed in 1974 and the buildings served as an annexe for Parliament House between 1976 and 1984. The Hyatt Hotel Group re-opened the hotel in 1987. Adjacent to the Canberra Hotel is the Canberra Croquet Club. The only croquet club in Canberra, it was opened in 1928 and was restricted to females until 1975. As with the hotel, the clubhouse was built in federation-style architecture and has been heritage-listed along with the croquet lawns. Immediately to the north of Canberra Hotel on Commonwealth Avenue is Albert Hall, built in 1927, which was in the early years of Canberra, one of the main centres of social, musical, theatrical, ceremonial and artistic activity in the capital. It was opened by Prime Minister Stanley Bruce and the subject of royal visits. Although its functionality has been superseded by more specialised entertainment and cultural institutions built in modern times, it is still frequently used for community events. It has been heritage listed for its social and historical value, and as an example of early Canberra architecture.

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External links

Yarralumla Residents Association
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Yarralumla Page
{{South Canberra Suburbs Diplomatic districts Suburbs of Canberra