| Turner Canberra, Australian Capital Territory |
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| Population: | 3010 (2006 census)[1] | ||||||||||||
| Established: | 1928 | ||||||||||||
| Postcode: | 2612 | ||||||||||||
| District: | North Canberra | ||||||||||||
| Assembly Electorate: | Molonglo | ||||||||||||
| Federal Division: | Fraser | ||||||||||||
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Turner (postcode: 2612) is a leafy early Canberra suburb, close to Canberra City and the Australian National University (located in the suburb of Acton).
Turner is named after Sir George Turner, a Federalist, legislator and one of the founders of the Australian Constitution. He was a Premier of Victoria, and later Federal Treasurer under prime ministers Barton, Deakin and Reid. Streets in Turner are mostly named after writers, legislators and pioneers.[2]
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Turner was developed in the 1940s and 1950s. It was one of the last suburbs developed with the garden city theme of super-wide nature strips. In fact it is said that Turner represents the pinnacle of spacious garden city design with wide 12 yard nature strips with generously wide roads that give a more spacious feel than older suburbs such as Reid or Braddon, and more consistently wide nature strips and larger parks compared to slightly later suburbs like O'Connor.
Turner, though a small suburb, can be divided into three logical areas:
David Street which forms Turner's northern boundary is designed to line up with Black Mountain in one direction and Mount Majura in the other direction. This provides an impressive vista in either direction whilst driving this street. Greenway Street also provides impressive vistas to Mount Ainslie and Black Mountain.
Original block sizes were generous in Turner, ranging from around 800 m2 to 1400 m2, with a couple even reaching 1600 m2. 900–1000 m2 is typical. In the postwar period when resources were scarce, surprisingly small houses were built on these large blocks that are now inner city. This has made Turner blocks prime targets for redevelopment, whether it be for units, townhouses, dual occupancies or occasional luxury houses. It was quite usual with the original buildings to have tiny three bedroom and even two bedroom houses on the blocks with floor areas of around 85 m2 - 110 m2. These houses were not only small but typically had tiny windows and were poorly positioned on the block for solar access - an important consideration in Canberra's cold climate. Houses were typically positioned for aesthetic effect with various ideas like inner-corner semi-detached (Hackett Gardens), facing the corner (Macleay Street) or symmetrical arrangements between the houses (Holder Street).
Over the years very few if any houses remain in their original unextended state. Floor plans of the original government designed and built houses can be obtained from the local planning authorities. Many houses have been replaced by multi-story unit developments. The scale of redevelopment post-2000 has been significant - population in the suburb has grown from 1852 people in 2001 to 3010 in 2006.
A number of artifacts of the original design of Turner can still be seen. Firstly, as is typical for Canberra, powerlines are behind the houses so as not to interfere with street trees. Street lamps are low and designed for pedestrians. Several different designs of lamp were installed originally, and examples of each can be still be seen; however, unfortunately, the replacement of lamps has not been historically sensitive. Some streets have footpaths with the house numbers imprinted on the concrete and red fire hydrants can be seen in some areas. Because the suburb's construction was interrupted by the war, various ideas can be seen in the layout of footpaths. For example in the southern areas, footpaths cut off the diagonal of the block. In McKay Gardens it has service lanes as might be found in Balmain in Sydney.
Turner has an excellent combined Special-Education and Mainstream Public school situated between David, Hartley and Condamine Streets, with a combined Pre-school. There are also a number of child-care centres:
Turner has a generous selection of churches:
It also has a tennis club (in Condamine Street) and lawn bowls club (in McCaughey Street) and several ethnic clubs, a French association (the Alliance Française) (in McCaughey Street) and Polish club (in David Street) and Croatian club (in McCaughey Street). There was a police youth club on Watson Street (relocated to West Belconnen in late 2006 due to costly maintenance issues with the building).
Turner is within walking distance of the CBD and it also adjoins the local O'Connor shops. Its proximity to Acton, the location of the Australian National University makes it a desirable location for students and professors to live, although the high rent prices force many students to look elsewhere.
Turner has a high proportion of parks and open space. This is due to a number of factors:
Haig Park in Turner consists of two main sections, cut in half by McCaughey Street. If one counts that part of Haig Park is cut off by Sullivan's creek, there are three parts. Two small sections have been divorced from the park, one for the Scout hall and one for a preschool.
Calcareous shales from the Canberra Formation are overlain by Quaternary alluvium. This rock is the limestone of the original title of Canberra "Limestone Plains".
Several earthquake fault lines pass through Turner; and its residents often experience earth tremors.
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