Griffith is an early inner-south suburb of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Griffith contains the Manuka Shopping Centre, one of the earliest shopping areas built in Canberra. Noted buildings in the suburb include the Russian Embassy and St Paul's Anglican Church. Griffith, sized at approximately 3 km², is one of Canberra's oldest suburbs, with several of its streets designed according to Walter Burley Griffin's original designs for Canberra. The suburb has 20 parks covering nearly 12% of the total area.

History

Settlement of the Blandfordia 5 Precinct southwest of Manuka began in 1926 and 1927. In 1928, southern Blandfordia (named after the Christmas Bell) was renamed Griffith and northern Blandfordia became Forrest. Griffith is named after Sir Samuel Griffith, who was chosen in 1903 as the first Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia and retained his position until retirement in 1919. Streets in Griffith are named after explorers. Griffith includes several areas that are listed by the ACT Heritage Council:

Demography

At the, Griffith had a population of 5,328 people, including 1.3% Indigenous people. The major industry of Griffith's citizens was central government administration and 41.7% of Griffith workers were professionals, 23.0% were managers and 11.6% were clerical and administrative workers. The median Griffith citizen was 38 years old, earning a mean weekly gross personal income of approximately $1,572 per week, compared to the ACT mean of $1,203 and the Australian mean of $805. 66.9% of people were born in Australia. The next most common country of birth was England at 4.2%. 76.6% of people spoke only English at home. The most common responses for religion were No Religion (48.4%) and Catholic (17.8%).

Politics

Griffith is located within the federal electorate of Canberra, which is currently represented by Alicia Payne in the House of Representatives. In the ACT Legislative Assembly, Griffith is part of the electorate of Kurrajong, which elects five members on the basis of proportional representation, currently two Labor, two Greens and one Liberal. Polling place statistics are shown to the right for the Griffith polling place at St Edmund's College in the 2019 federal and 2016 ACT elections.

Geology

Rocks in Griffith are from the Silurian age. Mount Painter Volcanics dark grey to green grey dacitic tuff is found to the south west of the Deakin Fault. Canberra Formation, calcareous shale is in the north east of the Deakin Fault. The Deakin Fault is named after the suburb, and in the suburb runs from Canberra Avenue at Manuka to Frome Street. The Deakin fault is an important fault running in the north west direction across most of Canberra.

Education

Griffith residents get preference for: Griffith is home to Canberra's first private Catholic boys school, St Edmund's College, a Christian Brothers school opened in 1954. There are 5 other schools located in the suburb. The Russian Embassy School in Canberra, a Russian primary school operated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, is located on the grounds of the Embassy of Russia in Canberra in Griffith. It provides a free education to Russian diplomat families and accepts other children on a tuition basis.

Notable places

The Canberra South Bowling Club on the corner of Austin and La Perouse Streets was designed by the architect Harry Seidler and completed in 1959 and demolished in 2014 to make way for high density apartments.

Footnotes