A handsome, pile-driving brute of a road locomotive, famous for using its big muscles for very heavy lifting in the building of early Canberra, has steamed, clanking, on to the ACT Heritage Register.
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The just-announced additions to the Register include, as well as this mighty John Fowler Locomotive 16161, the remains of an early settler home, Aboriginal grinding grooves in Latham and a rare eyewitness account, with charming artworks, of Canberra as it was from 1926 to 1931.
David Flannery, Chair of the ACT Heritage Council, explains that the locomotive, made by John Fowler & Co of Leeds (Yorkshire, UK), was richly deserving of heritage status because of "its special association with Canberra's early development".
The brawny road locomotive chugged to and fro on the Canberra city site between 1925 and 1927. Awesomely strong and one of two of its kind employed at Canberra, it belonged to the most powerful class of road locomotives ever made. At work in Canberra it would tow up to seven wagons at a time, each wagon loaded with 15 tonnes of crushed rock. Packing a wallop, it helped perform pile driving.
And surviving road locomotives like this are rare. They were so very expensive (they had sophisticated engines and Flannery says "they were cutting-edge pieces of technology of their time") that few of them were made.
When its work in the city was done it found other employment in our region. For some time it has been kept at Lanyon. Flannery rejoices that "it has survived the decades wonderfully intact and it still works". He advises that the magnificent contraption will eventually go to the promised arts precinct at Kingston where its minders will "fire it up and run it around" to thrill visitors.
ACT Heritage Council deputy chair Dr Dianne Firth said the latest ACT Heritage Register additions ''reflect the diversity of Canberra's history, ranging from Aboriginal culture and history to early European settlement, through to the formative years of the nation's capital''.
"The remains of an early settler's home ... the Greenhills ruin in Stromlo, has been heritage registered as one of the last few stone buildings made from local materials.
"Other fascinating additions to the ACT Heritage Register are the three volumes that comprise the Jefferis and Whelen historical documentation of Canberra covering the period from 1926 to 1931.''
She said they provide a unique overview of life during the early years of Canberra, its people, stories, history and environment. The photographic, painted and written accounts record the cultural and social lives of Canberrans, ranging from those living in the developing civic centre to those in the more remote areas of the ACT.
Dr Firth said the Umbagong district park grinding grooves at Latham had been provisionally listed on the heritage register as important evidence of Aboriginal culture and history in the ACT.
''The grooves were used to sharpen stone axes and digging sticks and are evidence that the local Aboriginal people were at Ginninderra Creek, grinding material from the surrounding region," she said.
