Last updated 1Jul19

John Owens Tidbinbilla homestead site

The John Owens Tidbinbilla homestead site is located 500m south-east of the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex car park on private property.

Location: GR 55H FA 80239-79920 (MGA94), Tidbinbilla 8627-2S 1:25000


SoS PT09 Homestead ruin and well – Tidbinbilla (John Owens), July 2010

Visit: 6 Jul 10

Photographs are available.

Documentation:

• Sites of Significance in the ACT. A 9 volume set, pre-cursor to the ACT Heritage Register. Published in 1988 (Vols 1-7), 1989 (Vol 8) and 1990 (Vol 9). Site PT9. “The site is a levelled house platform with the remains of a stone hearth and fragments of hand-made brick. There are no structural above-ground remains. Fifty metres north of the house a well dug into a rock in a shallow gully has been lined with stone fragments quarried from a nearby outcrop. The hut site is the remains of the home of John Owen, a selector who took up land in the valley in 1865-66, possibly as a “dummy for Andrew Cunningham of ‘Lanyon’”. See extracts of the relevant pages in the photos above.