Franklin

Our new house is in the new suburb of Franklin in Canberra. For some reason the ACT Land Development Agency calls it Bridgewater at Franklin, but nobody else does. To check out the plans and location for Franklin, check out the suburb location maps here.

Last weekend, I had a look around the suburb to get a feel for it. The feeling that we mostly got, is that the place is incomplete. Maybe a quarter of the suburb has buildings in various stages of construction, but the rest is empty infrastructure. As you can see in the picture below, there are a lot of empty lots.

There's also quite a lot of construction going on, which made for interesting poking about.

I've always liked nosing about half built houses to see the frames and how they're set out. Its a trait I inherited from my father - I remember when I was younger and we used to go walking, he'd always want to go and have a look in any half built houses in our neighbourhood. I feel the urge even more strongly now that I'm investing in a house myself.

But more on that in a different post. Possibly about specific house stalking.

One other characteristic that dominates Franklin (apart from the empty streets and half built houses) is a system of drainage channels and ponds that runs through he heart of the suburb. Hopefully, this will eventually provide a nice focal point for the suburb and be a nice area to walk/run around.

There's also a couple of nice bridges over the run off area, which is actually quite nicely landscaped with a system of reeds and rock filtration areas. It's not really very clear fro the picture above, but apart from a bit of rubbish blown from the building site next door, it looks quite good.

The idea of building drainage areas and run offs like this is something that is common in Canberra, especially in the new suburbs. Even in the older suburbs like the inner north areas, there are systems of open drainage and flooding areas. Its not something I was used to - in Perth, where I've lived most of my life, the run off is quite minimal. I've always assumed its because the soil was a more porous sand there, but it probably also has as much to do with the planning and infrastructure.

There are permanent ponds as well, which have already been populated with ducks.

Ducks! on a building site!

Overall, the suburb is very much only half finished. I have a lot of optimism that it will be really nice when its finished, even if the houses are little boxes on the hillside (little boxes made of ticky tacky).