Brenda Lander has provided some neighbourhood photos from October 1982. She writes:
"This is our block while building 25 Jaeger Cct. Purchased in October 1982."
"25 Jaeger block with 23 Jaeger complete beside and looks up towards Timbertop court in the background"
Barbara Peek provided these images from a 1980s sales brochure. She says,
"This was the brochure from the Jennings office when we bought one of the 21
blocks (1 Isles Place). Sue Wickham (Jennings Sales Person) was selling
the blocks. Interesting to see how the plans changed. It was the first
development undertaken by a private company in Canberra."
Eileen and Greg Dunstone provided this interesting snippet of local history.
I came across this recently - a list of those that purchased "land only"
from Jennings, instead of "house & land". Presumably all constructed
non-Jennings houses. The historical lease prices are shown!
The Department of Territories, had contracted Jennings to develop our suburb
with the requirement that they sell "house & land" packages.
In phase 1 (Portus to Weatherburn) Jennings requested approval to sell a
number of "land only" leases (presumably to solve a cash flow issue). The
Department gave them permission to sell 20 only blocks, but Jennings entered
contracts with a lot more than 20.
The government allowed those in the attached list to settle their purchases
- 21 of them - but then refused subsequent settlements. Some Jennings land
only customers then bought Jennings houses, but 3 of us in Portus Place
fought on until the Government terminated the leases because Jennings hadn't
complied with the lease conditions. A Supreme Court case was then involved
and eventually the 3 of us got the blocks and build non- Jennings homes.
I'm not sure if and how any non Jennings homes were constructed in Phase 2
(Weatherburn to Clews)
There's been quite some appreciation in unimproved values of South Bruce blocks. Some blocks with 1983 values of $32,000 have values of $1,080,000 in 2024 (a compounding growth rate of more than 9%pa).
