A Walk in Watson

After eating those potato chips (not my best moment, but a good sign that the meals I've been eating lately aren't entirely satisfying. Instead of eating the chips (which supplied fat, salt and sugar but not much else), I could've fried up some bacon and added some extra protein to my indulgent little snack. Oh well, the thing is, I ate them and there are still like, three or four more bags in the pantry (the boys devoured the two-thirds of the bag I didn't eat), and I'm not at all interested in eating any of them any time soon.

But the topic of this post is the walk Tom and I took to counter the scarfage of the chips. We took a little drive out of Gungahlin to North Canberra, and took a 90 minute stroll around Watson. As far as I know, Watson was developed in the 60s and 70s on what was then Canberra's northern edge. Back in the day, there was a drive-in there, but now all that's left of it is the sign (which I didn't get a picture of, because it's on the highway, and we didn't walk over there).

One of the nice things about walking around some of the older suburbs (well, older than the suburbs of Gungahlin) is that there are a lot more trees.


Most of the homes we saw were older two or three bedroom houses on nice, big lots. Some had unattached single garages, others had carports, and a few just had driveways and storage sheds.


Some of the houses were a bit hard to spot. We didn't see anything that would qualify as a suburban jungle, but there were some lots lots with extensive "landscaping". Which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. Big manicured lawns don't impress me.


This place caught my eye because I liked the stone walls. I'm not a big fan of yard-work in general, but I'd sure as hell rather put in the time to build something like that then spent it pushing a mower.


And I don't know what it looks like in winter, but with the flowers blooming, the yard looked nice.


Not my style, but I thought this house was a good example of what can be done with a little effort. There were lots of houses with this same basic design, but this one stood out because the owner painted it white (most are a light brown brick) and by doing up the yard (and I'm guessing here, but I don't think it would've cost a lot to do it).


Because it's close to the city (about 5 km or 3 miles from downtown), quite a few of the older homes are being bought up and refurbished. In the time we've lived in Canberra, the average house price in Watson has gone from just under $200k to $500k.


We saw at least a half a dozen houses that had been refurbished with corrugated sheet metal exteriors. But this one was the most extensive and the most striking.


So we explored a bit of Watson (more than planned, due to a wrong turn that turned an hour-long walk into a 90-minute walk), including parts of it that, after having lived in Canberra for over ten years, I've never seen before (or, if I did, I just drove through looking for someplace else, and didn't pay any attention). That's one of the nice things about walking. You can not only explore new places, but you see not-so-new places in an entirely different way.

Looking at Google Earth for ideas on which surburbs I'd like to walk in next, I'm starting to think that a hike to the summit of Mt. Majura (888 m/2,913 ft according to Wikipedia, a 900 to 1000 ft climb from a starting point in Watson or Hackett) might be on the cards.