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lcurham · 3 months ago

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Kambah Turns 50

From Aug 16 to Oct 12, the exhibition Kambah Turns 50 is on at one of Canberra's Territory-government funded arts venues, the Tuggeranong Arts Centre https://tuggeranongarts.com/kambah-50-group-exhibition-16-aug-12-oct/

I'm the curator and artist behind the exhibition. It had great coverage in the Canberra Times last Saturday (24 Aug) with a box on the front page and an almost full page review. The online version called it a 'must-see exhibition'. The exhibition is just one component of this project about my suburb Kambah. The purpose was to explore how we can build relationships in our community, strengthen our ties. I've been working over four years to explore how heritage and our sense of a past that we share through the celebrations of the 50th this year can do this. The success of the exhibition and the numerous related events suggest it's worked.

How does this connect to Perth? Kambah and Midland seem to share some things in common - era and planners, it seems that Gordon Stephenson had a hand in both. So there may be work to do to explore reputational repair in Midland as well. I spent lots of time in Midland in the first quarter of 2024.

Front page of the Canberra Times, Sat 24 Aug 2024.

It includes the work of six other artists and items from cultural collections in Canberra and other parts of Australia. Also in the show are items from residents and former residents, works created by the Arts Centre with a local school and photographs discovered through a public program run by the Arts Centre. From my perspective, the whole exhibition is an artwork, an exploration of my suburb Kambah and how it is viewed and experienced. Why do I think of it as an artwork in itself? What follows teases this out.

Kambah is a suburb of Canberra with a mixed reputation in the ACT community. In 2009, it was honoured or maligned, depending on your point of view, as Canberra's biggest bogan suburb. I've lived in Kambah for a decade and when I moved here, I was puzzled by this reputation. Yes, we are mixed socio-economically and our housing is diverse - from thoughtful 1970s architecture to modest state-built houses, government houses or 'govvies' as we call them in Canberra. Yet we're surrounded by hills, right next to the Murrumbidgee and with the backdrop of the Brindabella mountains. It is physically beautiful with a canopy of 1970s eucalypts that means the houses of the suburb almost completely disappear when you view Kambah from the hilltops.

Kambah has a history of losing things - some of this is about not recognising the heritage we have - an example is the homestead of the station 'Kambah', pulled down following vandalism in the 1980s rather than repaired. Other parts of Canberra have their no-longer-needed public buildings, like schools, converted to community centres. Not in Kambah - they are sold, no longer for the community. Research from 2008 conducted by Kambah locals showed we have low social capital with few social networks based in the suburb. Since I came to Kambah I have been an environment volunteer, leading a landcare group. I wondered over our reputation but I also began to recognise it as a risk for us for the future - Australian experience in the past five years shows that as climate change bites, communities that can come together will fare better, communities of South Coast NSW are an obvious example to Canberra people.

In this context, I began a project to map the experience of Kambah, mine and others. This led me to investigate collections and gather reports and reflections from residents into an online 'scrapbook' with a handful of entries in a locative media map for the mobile phone. I grappled with challenges all archivists face, how to represent a community authentically and ethically. So I turned to my own representations of Kambah with a long series of pinhole photographs and photograms. I exhibited these in 2023 at the same venue in the exhibition Kambah. The goal of that exhibition was to learn more stories from the community and to explore what we could do to build our social capital, what could bring us together. I was aware that Kambah would turn 50 in 2024 and I began to explore community reactions to celebrating this milestone. During that 2023 exhibition, I held a series of public events - a physical meet up of the local Facebook group, a kitchen table conversation to talk about planning blueprints for our part of Canberra and a gathering of south Canberra artists. In my mind, the goal was to find ways to bring people together and strengthen or create bonds. I put in a proposal to the Arts Centre for an exhibition on Kambah's 50th. I began having meetings to talk specifically about Kambah's 50th - initially it was a tiny group, mostly of the artists. They contributed the early ideas for how Kambah should celebrate 50 - art at the shops, renaming landmarks to Ngunawal names were two. The Facebook group convenor amplified our small meeting by discussing it on the Kambah noticeboard, members shared ideas: a burn-out comp and bushdance were two that came from there. By then I had confirmation of the exhibition from the Arts Centre so dates were set. I put in a grant drawing on the artists ideas to see if we could make them reality - not successful. In early 2024, meetings drew a few more people and more check-ins with the Facebook group took place to see what resonated with the community.

We soon became a fairly regular group but still just a handful. The ideas and the program took up some of the early ideas and augmented and added to them. Individuals took the lead on events. As we called out for resources, we drew new people and became a group of about a dozen. My role was to start the conversation, push forward on the program, refine and develop the ideas the community suggested and respond as new people offered new ideas and skills that extended what we'd initially planned. The burn-out comp became a classic car show, the long table lunch wasn't exactly one long table but it was a very exciting day with our Federal MP and the Chief Minister in attendance.

Left to right: Pip, Rachel, Andrew Barr, ACT Chief Minister, David Smith, Federal MP for Bean.

The barn dance was dropped as it became clear the community didn't really want it. The bones were there from the first meeting in October 2023 for quite a few of the events but they have been elaborated and expanded in very exciting ways. The ambitious three part heritage day organised by a local historian started as a modest morning walk around the old farm. New events have been added - a trivia quiz, kids' colouring and poetry competitions are examples.

It's such an exciting ride to see the events become reality and to see the Kambah community enthusiastically show up to be part of them.

The challenge is how to claim and share credit appropriately! As an artist, I just want to share it but as an academic, I have a responsibility to claim some of it. Tricky.

The whole idea was to get the community to run with this and claim it for their own. That's been successful beyond my wildest dreams. I do appreciate the personal recognition as I have invested much time and energy. I have a printed section of Hansard in which my Federal MP acknowledged the project and my role in it. The Canberra Times wrote a great review of the exhibition.

Here's the Hansard extract:

There's been lots of media

The Canberra Times Sat 24 Aug 2024

RiotACT - 'Happy birthday, Kambah! The biggest suburb in the Southern Hemisphere, right?*'

4 June 2024 | James Coleman

Mix 106.3

6 July 2024

17 Aug 2024:

Kambah turns 50 this year. To celebrate an exhibition was launched through the week. Louise Curham, Kambah Resident from Kambah Turns 50 shared details about the exhibition

Other media:

Valley FM local radio - interview July 2024

Other media not focused on me but covering Kambah Turns 50:

Canberra Weekly - coverage of Kambah Turns 50

Canberra Times - coverage of Heritage Day events in Kambah Turns 50

Canberra Times - coverage of first residents of Kambah

All the events:

Lantern Walk 10 Aug

Long Table Lunch 18 Aug

Church service 25 Aug

Kids poetry and colouring comps 10-31 Aug

Classic Car Show and Village Fair 31 Aug

Heritage Day 7 Sep

Dogs Picnic 8 Sep

Environment walks 14 Sep

Sunrise walk 15 Sep

Welcome to Country, Smoking Ceremony and planting day 15 Sep

Sustainability Day 22 Sep

Trivia comp 10 Aug to 26 Sep

Arts Centre events:

Call for photos from residents July 2024

Kambah Now and Then - rephotographing Kambah, a workshop with PhotoAccess Aug 31-15 Sep.

Some of the event socials:

The Riot ACT article:

Happy birthday, Kambah! The biggest suburb in the Southern Hemisphere, right?*

4 June 2024 | James Coleman

The Kambah Co-op was founded in 1975 to protest the suburb’s overpriced supermarket. Photo: ArchivesACT.

Kambah was named “Canberra’s booner capital” in 2009 by now-defunct satirical news website The Punch when the anonymous author highlighted the “number of V8 Falcons on the nature strip, wandering terrier dogs, and the enormous size of the local Burns Club”, but there’s a lot more to Kambah than that, according to local Louise Curham.

The loyal resident of 10-plus years is organising a series of events this year to mark 50 years since Kambah’s first residents began moving in in June 1974.

Louise has already spent more than four years constructing a digital map of the entire 1130-hectare suburb, complete with video, audio, text and image entries on various locations so users can tap on an area to learn more about it.

During research for these entries, she would ask everyone the same question: “Is there something about Kambah you know that you would like other people to know?”

She says the answers have been fascinating.

“People from the outside would think Kambah is surely a place you’d like to leave. But I’ve learnt this is not the case. There are a lot of second-generation Kambah people who love it.”

The suburb carries its name from the former Kambah sheep station, belonging to the Bennet family – Canberra aristocracy for their time.

“Kambah Homestead might have been part fibro, but it was very beautifully decorated and had pillars out the front and a sweeping driveway and swimming pool,” Louise adds.

“Life in early Kambah was pretty nice.”

Come the early 1970s, and with then prime minister Gough Whitlam massively expanding the size of the public service and Canberra’s population exploding 10 per cent year on year, the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) needed somewhere to put all the young families.

The Kambah Woolshed. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Nick D.

Rumour has it Kambah ended up so big because some public servant forgot to divvy it up into four suburbs, but in reality, it – together with Wanniassa next door – was planned as big territorial units made up of large blocks. They became known as ‘Nappy Valley’.

“The NCDC held this seminar, where they brought together a whole cross-section of age groups to learn what kind of suburb people wanted to live in,” Louise says.

“They were very much thinking about mental health. They were really trying to think about a place that would be good for people.”

To make room, the creek known as Village Creek was put underground through a pipe, and a large trap was built at the Lake Tuggeranong end to prevent upstream pollution from making its way into the lake – an engineering first for Canberra.

However, when Whitlam was dismissed and his successor Malcolm Fraser got to work slashing 17,000 government jobs, the prediction of 40,000 people in the valley by 1980 collapsed. All the houses were eventually built in subsequent decades but at a much slower rate.

READ ALSO Goodbye The Green Shed. Hello Goodies Junction. A new Canberra institution is about to be reborn

“It’s really interesting how these big-picture forces play out in our everyday lives that we never think or look at,” Louise says.

Kambah had its own grocer from the beginning, but it didn’t take long for residents to hit back at the overpriced goods by forming their own co-op-style supermarket in 1975, with shares available for $10 each.

Located on Mannheim Street, this was the first and only supermarket in Tuggeranong to be started and owned by a community and the second retail store to open in Tuggeranong.

A Kambah primary school also became the first in Canberra to feature a computer lab because one of the student’s fathers happened to work in the right circles and agreed to help source the equipment.

Kambah was designed to have several local shopping centres, even if some have since folded. Photo: ArchivesACT.

Of course, there are less glamorous accounts, too. Like one from the 1980s, when a male “exposed himself” to a young horse rider. And former pizza delivery drivers who remember the ‘munchies’ houses, where the occupants would round out their marijuana smoking with lots of pizza.

“To find ways to visualise stories like this without necessarily pinpointing them on the map is an interesting challenge,” Louise says.

But the vast majority are positive.

“I mean, like all suburbs, people are busy, and there are lots who live in Kambah who don’t really connect, but then there are others for whom this is a really precious place,” she says.

“And as we have all these planning conversations across the ACT at the moment, if those people don’t speak now, we’re going to get what they give us.”

Kambah has a pretty side. Photo: File.

Louise is hosting a ‘Kambah 50’ event in the foyer of the Tuggeranong Arts Centre on Saturday, 17 August, with a number of other events to come.

‘A Long Table Picnic Lunch’ will be held on Sunday, 18 August, and a dog-friendly community picnic on Sunday, 8 September, with a winter lantern walk, bush dance, and sunrise walk up Mount Taylor (with champagne at the top) also in the works.

*Now, if you’ve come all this way waiting for the claim about Kambah being the biggest suburb in the southern hemisphere, it turns out that’s not true.

Not even close.

In 2017, the ABC wrangled data from PSMA Australia that revealed not only is the Gulf of Carpentaria technically a ‘suburb’ and larger, but there are another 20 to 30 urban suburbs with a similar population size and density to Kambah, but over a larger area. And that’s just in Australia.

Sorry.

Visit the Kambah Turns 50 website or Facebook page for the full program of events. Explore the Kambah People’s Map online.

#kambahturns50

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