All Saints Church

 We often use Cowper St when travelling between EPIC and Civic.  Close to the Limestone Avenue end of that street is an attractive looking Church: All Saints Anglican.  Frances had wondered about walking there one morning, and we decided the time (and weather) was right on 5 March.  On the way out we used the route suggested by Google Maps in a string of blue dots.  Coming back we used the red arrow route (mainly to revisit Ainslie School which one of our grand daughters attended when living in Canberra.

The main road North was Torrens St, through Braddon.  Looking at all the new apartment blocks in the street I commented to Frances that all thoughts of the heritage precinct had vanished, Then I came across the pictured paving stone which IMO counts as heritage. Simon and Garfunkel sung that in New York "the words of the Prophet are written on the subway wall." In Braddon they are in the sidewalk.
Here is the church.  There were a lot of signs explaining the history of the church: this is not spelt out in the website but presumably is in the book you can buy for $100.  Obviously the business in the Gospels about throwing the commercial interests out of the temple has been overlooked!
The history is that the building was originally the railway station at Rookwood Necropolis in Sydney built because the road was too long (and bad) to deliver bodies for burial.  The trains would drive through the building for unloading.  When the road improved the trains were no longer used and the station fell into disrepair.  A grassfire damaged the building in the 1950s and the building was offered for sale, being bought for £100 in 1957 by the vicar of All Saints.  

Every stone was numbered and 80 semitrailer loads of stone were shipped to Canberra.  Apparently it was slightly modified in rebuilding (like the axe with 2 new heads and 4 new handles) but it is still the same structure😁!

Despite its links to the necropolis there is no graveyard at the church.  However there are many memorial plaques in a small garden out the back.

On out way back (red arrows we noticed the consistent design  - white walls and green guttering etc - of some of the original (around 1927) buildings in the area.  Ainslie Primary has always been a school but its companion Ainslie Public School is now the Ainslie Art Centre.  The third building is Gorman House: originally a Hostel for public servants and now an Arts Centre.  (In photos of the area from eg the summit of Mount Ainslie Gorman House stands out quite dramatically.)



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