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Canberra Today 15°/19° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

An interactive website to explore Icon Water’s history

ICON Water has launched a new web portal dedicated to telling Canberra’s water story. The site is intended for educators, students and historians.

Angie Drake, Icon Water’s spokeswoman acknowledged the important work by the people at Icon Water now, and the many hundreds of predecessors that have contributed over the last ten decades.

“This interactive website is a fantastic education tool that the ACT community will utilise and draw upon for many years to come,” Angie said.

“2015 is the 100 year celebration of both the Cotter Dam and of Icon Water, and we are very excited to be able to provide a commemoration of the important history of our business and of our community over the last 100 years.

“The portal allows users to travel back in time and experience the last 100 years of our water story in Canberra, seeing and hearing from those who have helped to plan and build it.

“We know that the location of Australia’s capital city, Canberra, was determined largely because of the reliability of the iconic water supply in the Cotter River. The Icon Water 100 website allows the user to explore the early days of the city, when it was little more than a sheep paddock and go back to where it all began.

“Frederick Campbell and Ernest de Burgh are not household names when it comes to Canberra’s early days but perhaps they should be. Without the championing efforts of these two men, the nation’s capital would have most likely been located near Tumut or Dalgety. From this point on you can learn about how Canberra and its water supply evolved with the changing world.”

[Photo: Laying the pipeline to connect the dam to Canberra (Photograph from the collection of the Canberra and District Historical Society).]

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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