New Hallway Exhibition OPEN NOW!


7th January 2024
By Engagement Committee
Visit the new exhibition - Life on the Limestone Plains - Open now for viewing at Cook Community Hub.

Life on the Limestone Plains

On loan from the Hall Heritage Centre, this exhibition is an insight into the life of European settlers on the Limestone Plains from the 1820s to Federation.

Following the first sightings by Europeans in the 1820s, the first twenty years was primarily one of absentee landowners and large estates established with convict labour.  By the 1850s, an increasing number of free settlers and pardoned convicts created a need for land and they were able to apply for small parish portions of 40 to 320 acres. 

Various aspects of how settlers established new communities and a different life is told in a series of stories.  Education was seen as the key to developing the future and several one teacher Bush schools were built around the district.  Severe recessions in the 1840s and 1890s had a significant impact on the district, as did bushfire, possum, plagues, flood, disease and other tribulations.  However the declaration of a Federal Capital and the compulsory acquisition of all land in the new Federal Capital territory from around 1911 fundamentally changed the landscape and the life of the early settler families.

Read about the fascinating stories from a bygone era.  This free exhibition is open now at the Cook Community Hub, 41 Templeton Street, Cook, ACT. 

Family History ACT would like to thank the Hall Heritage Centre for the loan of this exhibition.

 

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