Acton is a suburb 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

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Acton covers an area west of the CBD, bordered by Black Mountain

Black Mountain (Australian Capital Territory)

Black Mountain is situated close to the central business district of Australia's capital city Canberra. Like all major hills in Canberra it is protected from development by the Canberra Nature Park. It is covered in native bushland and is a haven to native wildlife.With its peak at 811.987m AHD,...

 to the west and Lake Burley Griffin

Lake Burley Griffin

Lake Burley Griffin is an artificial lake in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia. It was completed in 1963 after the Molonglo River—which ran between the city centre and Parliamentary Triangle—was dammed...

 in the south. The Australian National University

Australian National University

The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...

 campus covers most of the suburb, though also located in Acton is the National Film and Sound Archive

National Film and Sound Archive

The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia’s audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of audiovisual materials and related items...

, a branch of the CSIRO and the National Museum of Australia

National Museum of Australia

The National Museum of Australia was formally established by the National Museum of Australia Act 1980. The National Museum preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation....

.

The population of Acton on census night 2006 was 1808 people, mostly students living at the Australian National University.

History

The suburb is named in recognition of one of the region's original homesteads 'Acton' which was sited near the present-day National Museum at the end of Liversidge Street.

With the establishment of the Federal Capital in 1911, territory administrators erected a temporary workers camp in the vicinity of 'Acton Homestead', since demolished, to house staff coordinating the development of the National Capital. The chief Surveyor Scrivener occupied Acton Homestead at an early stage during his survey of the capital site. The Bachelors' Quarters above Lennox Crossing, now renamed Lennox House, became the city's first guest house.

The alignment of Liversidge Street and Lennox Crossing follows the original line of the pre-1911 road towards the major ford across the Molonglo River. A low bridge and causeway was erected in 1911, at the site of the original river ford in an area subsequently inundated by Lake Burley Griffin

Lake Burley Griffin

Lake Burley Griffin is an artificial lake in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia. It was completed in 1963 after the Molonglo River—which ran between the city centre and Parliamentary Triangle—was dammed...

.

In 2011 a proposal was launched to build the Australia Forum

Australia Forum

The Australia Forum is a proposed convention centre complex for Canberra, Australia.In response to the Australian capital's "...lack of a sufficiently large, high quality, secure venue that can be locked down without disrupting the city, as well as a lack of sufficient accommodation of a suitably...

, a major convention centre complex, on the lake shoreline in Acton.

Geology

The southern part of Acton has a complicated arrangement of sediments that include the Pittman Formation greywacke

Greywacke

Greywacke or Graywacke is a variety of sandstone generally characterized by its hardness, dark color, and poorly sorted angular grains of quartz, feldspar, and small rock fragments or lithic fragments set in a compact, clay-fine matrix. It is a texturally immature sedimentary rock generally found...

 and the black coloured Acton Shale Member from the Ordovician

Ordovician

The Ordovician is a geologic period and system, the second of six of the Paleozoic Era, and covers the time between 488.3±1.7 to 443.7±1.5 million years ago . It follows the Cambrian Period and is followed by the Silurian Period...

 age. Then 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...

 age there is mudstone, State Circle Shale, and Camp Hill Sandstone. Some limestone is found near the National Museum of Australia.

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 are overlain by Quaternary alluvium on the north. This rock is the limestone of the original title of Canberra "Limestone Plains". Tertiary age pebbly gravels are left from when the Molonglo river was at a higher level.