Dickson is a suburb in the Inner North

North Canberra

North Canberra, also known as the Inner North, is a district of Canberra, the capital city of Australia, comprising 14 suburbs with 19,115 dwellings housing 42,113 people of the 324,034 people in the Australian Capital Territory...

 of Canberra

Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

, Australia. It is named after Sir James Dickson

James Dickson

Sir James Robert Dickson, KCMG was an Australian politician and businessman, the 13th Premier of Queensland and a member of the first federal ministry....

 (1832–1901) who was a Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

 advocate of Australian Federation and one of the founders of the Australian Constitution. There is no specific theme for street names.

History

Between 1926 and 1928, a small runway called Northbourne Aviation Ground was located where the Dickson Library and playing fields are now. This was Canberra's original airport. Dickson was gazetted on 28 September 1928, but the suburb was not settled until the 1960s. The suburb is characterised by leafy streets, detached single dwelling houses, and double story duplex townhouses.

Geography

The suburb is bounded by Northbourne Avenue, Antill Street, Phillip Avenue, Majura Avenue, Limestone Avenue and Wakefield Avenue. Dickson contains no hills or significant slopes. Sullivans Creek

Sullivans Creek

Sullivans Creek is a small creek in Canberra, the capital of Australia. It has a catchment area of .Located on the northern half of the city, it flows through the Australian National University into Lake Burley Griffin.-References:...

 passes through the middle of Dickson draining storm water from east to west.

Amenities

The suburb contains the Dickson Centre

Dickson Centre, Australian Capital Territory

The Dickson Centre, located in the suburb of Dickson, is a group centre in the inner northern suburbs of Canberra.The centre is the main commercial centre for the inner northern suburbs, after Civic, and is a significant site of employment...

, a significant commercial centre in Canberra’s Inner North containing the Woolworths Supermarkets outlet with the greatest turnover in Australia. The centre contains an ambulance station, office buildings, many shops and the Dickson Baptist Church.

Outside the Dickson Centre, the suburb contains the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...

 Canberra radio and television studios. Two colleges are located in the suburb, Dickson College

Dickson College

Dickson College is a two-year secondary college located in the Canberra suburb of Dickson, Australian Capital Territory. It was created in 1976 when Dickson High School closed....

, a public senior secondary school, and Daramalan College

Daramalan College

Daramalan College is an ACT senior high school in Canberra, Australia, located in the suburb of Dickson, near the Dickson Shopping Centre. It provides education from year 7 to year 12 , in a co-educational environment. Run by the Roman Catholic Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, it has an emblem of...

, a Catholic high school. The Daramalan Junior school was once located in Dickson, which operated between 1986 and 1997. It was a school for boys in years 5 and 6, and was near St. Brigid's Church.

Dickson has large playing fields with several ovals, which are used to play many sports including soccer, cricket and rugby, as well as the venue for schools carnivals, and are a popular place on weekends. Organisations calling the playing fields home including the Majura Junior Soccer Club and Corroboree Little Athletics. Near the playing fields is a walking track between rows of pine

Pine

Pines are trees in the genus Pinus ,in the family Pinaceae. They make up the monotypic subfamily Pinoideae. There are about 115 species of pine, although different authorities accept between 105 and 125 species.-Etymology:...

, oak

Oak

An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...

 and gum trees which leads to the Dickson shopping centre.
Hawdon Street is where the Downer Club and Observatory used to be located before being destroyed by fire in 2010. The street is cut in half by a stormwater drain, which has sometimes led to confusion.

Geology

Calcareous shale

Shale

Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable. Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering...

s from the Canberra Formation dates from the Silurian

Silurian

The Silurian is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Ordovician Period, about 443.7 ± 1.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Devonian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya . As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the...

 period.
This rock is the limestone of the original title of Canberra "Limestone Plains". Quaternary

Quaternary

The Quaternary Period is the most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the ICS. It follows the Neogene Period, spanning 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present...

 alluvium

Alluvium

Alluvium is loose, unconsolidated soil or sediments, eroded, deposited, and reshaped by water in some form in a non-marine setting. Alluvium is typically made up of a variety of materials, including fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel...

lies on top of the shale in the flatter parts of Dickson.