Kambah, Australian Capital Territory
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| Kambah Canberra, Australian Capital Territory |
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| Population: | 16141 (2001 census) | ||||||||||||
| Established: | 1974 | ||||||||||||
| Postcode: | 2902 | ||||||||||||
| Property Value: | AUD AU$311,000 (2005)[1] | ||||||||||||
| District: | Tuggeranong | ||||||||||||
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Kambah (postcode 2902) is the northernmost suburb in the district of Tuggeranong, Canberra. It is located just south of the Mount Taylor in the Canberra Nature Park.
It is located north of the suburbs of Greenway and Wanniassa. It is bounded by Sulwood Drive to the north and Athllon Drive to the south east.
Kambah was not designed according to the 'neighbourhood' philosophy guiding the design of other Canberra suburbs and is the largest suburb in the city with an area of 1130ha. It was first settled in 1974 and consists predominantly of detached single storey suburban houses. It was the first suburb in the satellite city of Tuggeranong. Originally it was intended to be four separate suburbs, but only one name was available. Kambah was named after the Kambah farm originally in this area. The name Kambah derives from Ngambri the name of the clan that originally lived in the area before European Occupation. The same word is the origin for the name Canberra.
Kambah has three district playing fields, and a number of public schools such as Mount Neighbour Primary School, Taylor Primary School, Village Creek Primary School, Urambi Primary School, and Kambah High School. and a Catholic school: St. Thomas the Apostle Primary School.
The Murrumbidgee Country Club is located in Kambah. Kambah has two shopping centres, the Kambah Village and the Kambah Centre.
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[edit] Kambah Village
Located in the north of the suburb is the main shopping centre called Kambah Village. It has a supermarket, service station, hotel, clubs and many smaller shops and businesses.
[edit] Kambah Centre
Located in the suburb is the Kambah Centre, a medium sized community centre with health centre. a storage facility, a service station, indoor sports facility, a Baptist Church, Two Buddhist and a Jehovah Witnesses centres. One of the car parks is used for model car racing by ACTRCCC. Nearby is Kambah High School and the Kambah Tennis Club.
[edit] Kambah High School
Kambah High School is a secondary school for years 7-10 (roughly 13 to 16 years of age). It has Kambah and Greenway as its main intake area, but does have students from other suburbs as well. It has approx. 400 students, and 45 staff. 2006 marks the 30th year of Kambah High operating.
On the 6 of June 2006 a ACT Government proposed plans to close up to 39 schools in the ACT. Kambah High School, along with 2 of the Kambah Primary Schools were 3 of the schools marked for closure.
On the 13th of December 2006 the ACT Government announced that Kambah High School would be closing at the end of 2007,due to the decreasing number of students and the falling ACT standard Testing Scores which the school displayed.
Overall the school will have operated for 31 years when the doors close at the end of 2007. During this time the school has both thrived and suffered in community reputation mainly due to several incidents with students in the past.
[edit] Physical features
West of Kambah is the Murrumbidgee River, one of Australia's major rivers. Surrounding hills include Mt Taylor, Arawang Hill, Mount Neighbour, McQuoids Hill, Forster Hill on the north side, and Urambi Hills on the south west side. Most of Kambah is occupied by the Village Creek Valley, but it also extends into Allens Creek and McQuoids Creek Valleys closer to the Murrumbidgee.
On the Murrumbidgee itself is the Red Rocks Gorge and Kambah Pool, a swimming hole.
[edit] Geological features
Kambah is underlain by Silurian volcanics. Rhyodacitic ignimbrite in the form of grey rhyodacitic and dacitic crystal tuff is under most of Kambah apart from the eastern corner. These are Laidlaw Volcanics aged 420.7±2.2 mya of Ludlow Age. In the east of Kambah alongside Athllon road can be found green-grey, purple and cream rhyolite, agglomerate, purple tuff or rhyodacite. In a band just to the west of this is red-purple and green-grey rhyodacite. This material is from the Deakin Volcanics and is older than the Laidlaw Volcanics. Also around Kambah on some of the hills are outcroppings of a coarse pink-brown rhyodacitic intrusion of porphyry. These intrusions can be found on Neighbour Hill, Forster Hill, McQuoids Hill, and the east and south east of Mt Taylor also around Menzie Place and another patch around the south of Mt Neighbour pre school. These intrusions were likely the necks of volcanoes that erupted the other tuff and dacite in the area.
A Cenozoic age dyke of Teschenite intrudes the Laidlaw ignimbrite in the Kambah Pool and Red Rocks Gorge area.
Quaternary alluvium covers the ground around the upper reaches of Village creek, around Drakeford Drive. A fault runs from the north west in Allchin Circuit to the south east under Urambi primary school.
ref:
The Laidlaw Volcanics: a Late Silurian point on the geological time scale by D. Wyborn and M. Owen, W. Compston and I. McDougall in Earth and Planetary Science Letters Volume 59, Issue 1 , June 1982, Pages 90-100
