Uriarra, Australian Capital Territory
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Uriarra is a settlement in the Australian Capital Territory. It had been a forestry settlement from the 1920s to the 1980s.
The 2003 bushfires destroyed 16 houses in Uriarra, with only 6 houses still standing afterwards. 15 families moved away from the settlement, with 6 remaining.
In 2007 the ACT government decided to redevelop the settlement as a rural village, and development of new roads and infrastructure commenced. Blocks of land are for sale as at 2008, but no new building has commenced. The development has a number of restrictions on building, such as there is no treated town water, only untreated water from the Bendora Dam. Each house must have a rain water tank, sewerage treatment, and firefighting system. The village has a buffer zone for horse agistment.
[edit] Location
The village is off the side of the Brindabella Road that connects the Cotter area via the Brindabella Ranges to Brindabella, New South Wales and Tumut. It also has a farm called Uriarra about a kilometer to the west where Mountain Creek Road (the way to Yass) joins. Uriarra Crossing is a low level bridge over the Murrumbidgee River to the north, providing an alternative route to Weston Creek and Belconnen.
Uriarra Forest to the south was destroyed in the 2003 bushfire.
[edit] Geology
Uriarra Volcanics appear north west of the Winslade fault. It consists of dacite lava flows and pyroclastic deposits of tuff. A fine ashstone bed called Tarpaulin Creek Ashstone Member outcrops in a distorted north south line acts as a marker. Tuff and flows above and below the ashstone member contain obvious pink feldspar crystals. The tuff shows bedding, and the flows have banded flow structure. The Cotter Porphyry to the north of the Cotter Dam is actually a dacite flow. There is a limestone lens north of Uriarra Crossing. The outcrop goes from Mountain Creek Road in the west to the Murrumbidgee river in the east. It extends a few kilometers to the north of the ACT border and south to the Winslade Fault near the Cotter River. A wedge of limestone extends to the south south west including Pierces Creek. [1]
[edit] References
- ^ Henderson G A M and Matveev G, Geology of Canberra, Queanbeyan and Environs 1:50000 1980.
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