Latest News
Brass on the Grass Concert
Bring the family along to our annual fund-raising brass band concert on the lawns of the old primary school campus in Victoria Street Hall. The Centre's heritage displays will be open from 12 noon as... more »
Wattle (Arbor) Day
A little over 100 years ago a young school teacher, Ethel Harris (later Cavanagh), decided to improve the surroundings of the school where she had taken up her first teaching appointment, having gained... more »
Heritage Grants Announced
ACT Minister for Heritage Rebecca Vassarotti hosted a delightful gathering at the Mulligan's Flat information Centre Wildbark in Throsby on Tuesday 15th August to announce the 2023-2024 Heritage Grants.... more »
Bounty for the Centre - display cases arrive
The Museum of Australian Democracy (MOaD), located in the nation's old parliament house features collections that have unique historical value to Australia, having important associations with the processes... more »
Hosting ANU students
Dr Anna Edmundson and a group of fifteen graduate student in Museum and Heritage studies visited on 9 March as part of a course on 'Exhibition design and delivery'. Student are required to selected a project... more »
Normal opening hours
- Every Thursday morning, 9.00 am - 12.00 noon
- Every Sunday afternoon, 12 noon - 4.00 pm
- by appointment (email: ) or 6230 9630.
Location
The Centre is located in the former Hall Primary School, 17-19 Palmer Street, Hall. Parking is on Palmer Street or Hoskins Street.
Annual Address - Eric Martin AM
Distinguished heritage architect Eric Martin gave the Centre's annual address on Thursday 27th October. An audio recording of his address can be downloaded here.
Some recent Visitor feedback :
- "Excellent in so many ways!"
- "Such a fantastic place, so many memories"
- "Genuinely fascinating – extraordinary effort"
- "What as impressive display!"
- "This is an amazing dislay of artefacts of the area"
- "Really interesting. Loved 'Memory Lane'"
- "Excellent exhibition on selector families"
- "Loved the schoolhouse – great exhibits"
- "I was quite taken aback by the depth of your collection"
Heritage online - 'Bush Schools of the Canberra region' & 'Rediscovering Ginninderra'
This site has two major on-line displays. The first locates and tells the stories of more than eighty one-teacher bush schools of the Canberra region, and identifies nearly all of their teachers up to about 1940.
A second display 'Rediscovering Ginninderra' records prominent People and Places in the Ginninderra district (Belconnen plus Gungahlin) during the settlement era, illustrated by more than 400 photographs.
'From Ginin-ginin-derry to Hall'
Our main exhibition is a journey through time and space from Ginin-ginin-derry to Hall. 'Ginin-ginin-derry' was an aboriginal locality, first traversed by Europeans in the early 1820's and settled by them from around 1826, initially at 'Palmerville'. From the 1860's for half a century Ginninderra flourished, having its heyday in the 1890's and early 1900's when there was a church, school, post and telegraph office, blacksmith shop, police station, store, a nursery, and a boot-maker, Farmers Union, School of Arts, cricket club, and the large Ginninderra Estate.
A very productive agricultural area, Ginninderra supplied grain to the Araluen and Majors Creek goldfields, then wool to the Sydney markets. William Davis, then Tom Gribble, Edward Smith, Edmund Rolfe, 'Babe' Curran and others helped build a fine reputation for agriculture.
When Canberra was selected as the site for the capital and the new Federal government began resuming the land, Ginninderra's days were numbered. A new village site was proclaimed in 1882, and Hall began to grow into the kind of village that Ginninderra never quite became.
ANZAC : 'When Hall Answered the Call'+ 'Armistice and After'
'When Hall Answered the Call' commemorates the centenary of ANZAC. The original 2015 exhibition has since been scaled back, but the essence of it is preserved. Local soldiers' histories are fitted into the context of the Great War. A special feature of the exhibition is a re-created setting of a 'Welcome Home' ceremony that was held in the local Kinlyside Hall at the end of the war.
'Armistice and After', marking the centenary of the end of the Great War records the participation of the Hall district diggers in the triumphs of 1918, the euphoria that accompanied the end of hostilities and the difficulties of repatriation and adjustment to civilian life in a world where the promises of peace and prosperity never quite materialized.
A booklet by Allen Mawer 'When Hall Answered the Call' is available from the Centre ($10).
[See a review of the exhibition by Dr David Stephens at Honest History. ]
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the ACT, the Ngunnawal people. We acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region.