1950's Tourist map of the Canberra region

Tourist map circa 1950

Here is the original map we used to produce the cropped version for tracing the Kambah Road.

Tourist map from the 1950's

Welcome to the Kambah Road blog.

We are trying to show some of the historic footage and photos of the Kambah Road and surrounds of the Canberra District as it existed in the 1960's.

The National Film and Sound Archive has an archived copy of a home movie made by the owner of the Kambah Homestead.

The movie has been edited to show just the road, not the inhabitants of the family, as they were captured on the sunny afternoon drive. There is also a shot of the homestead as it looked in the 1970's. It had been altered substantially from its original structure.

The original movie was 15 minutes long, and it has been edited to show the road, and the surrounding region from the top of Mount Taylor. There is a quick cameo of the homestead at the end of the 3 minute edit.


Here is the original entry from the NFSA website:

"Title No: 589216

Title: [BENNET, STEPHEN : KAMBAH STATION : HOME MOVIE ]

Created Date: - 1960

Produced as: Home movie 

Media: Film 

Summary:  General note : The late Sim Bennet, owner of the Kambah Station and Mr Griffith, a family friend shot this film in 1960. The Bennet family occupied the Kambah Station property from 1940 to 1970, the film contains footage of the property in it hey days and includes the entrance of the property on Kambah lane, sheep and cattle pastures, view to the valley from Mt Taylor, the homestead with tennis court, family members etc. Kambah Station was a well-run property winning a number of industry awards from the Dept of the Interior. Sim Bennet was a well-known Canberra personality in his day, known as a successful horse breeder and racer in addition the station operated a top poll stud for Corriedale, Dorset and Horn sheep as well a growing crops such as Lucerne and Oats. The Bennet's lived on the farm until the lease ran out and the ACT Government resumed the property and the land for development. The suburb of KAMBAH is named after the property. The homestead featured in the film was demolished in the early 1980's after being abandoned for 10 years to make way for the subdivisions. This is unique footage of the Tuggeranong valley pre urbanisation.

Duration: 00:15:28

Place: Kambah ACT

Country of Origin: Australia

Language: English"

Map of Kambah Road from the 1960s

This is a map we sourced from the tourist centre in Canberra. The map was produced in the 1950's and shows the place names of the suburbs and districts at the time. There is a larger version of this map in a separate blog post titled '1950's Tourist Map of Canberra'.

It shows the area that we were interested in, being the land from the Cotter Road to the Monaro Highway.

Map from the 1950's

Below is the roughly same area from a modern mapping service. See how the Kambah Road, marked in red, runs from the Cotter Road, through Holder and Weston, Stirling and Fisher, skirts around Mount Taylor, and then runs almost straight across Kambah to meet the Monaro Highway. 

Map from 2014

Pictures of Kambah Road

Here we have some pictures from circa 1970's care of  the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC), which existed until 1984, when the ACT became self-governing.

The Kambah Homestead pine wind-break

Another view of the Creek after it dried out in 1977.