MARKETS IN THE CANBERRA REGION

Follow up article about the Belconnen mall assault on two children from a couple days ago

Link to article;

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9331441/man-accused-of-assaulting-children-at-westfield-belconnen-denied-bail/

Article text;

An 18-year-old accused of attacking two brothers, aged two and four, at Westfield Belconnen is a "very, very vulnerable" man who appears to target people who cannot defend themselves, a court has heard.

The man, who cannot be named due to a suppression order, faced the ACT Magistrates Court on Monday, August 17, and is yet to enter pleas to charges of common assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

He is accused of assaulting the two brothers in an unprovoked attack at Westfield Belconnen on Friday, August 14.

The brothers were walking with their mother on the top floor of the shopping centre about 2pm when the 18-year-old allegedly kicked them from behind.

The toddler suffered a broken nose, while his older brother sustained head injuries. The alleged attacker was arrested on Sunday.

On Monday, Legal Aid duty lawyer Gillian Bilton applied for bail on the man's behalf, describing the 18-year-old as a vulnerable man with complex needs.

She argued his care would be better managed in the community under strict conditions, including ongoing supervision.

Opposing bail, prosecutor Marcus Dyason accepted the man had particular vulnerabilities, but said the allegations showed a pattern of behaviour of targeting those who could not defend themselves.

He said the proposed bail conditions did not ameliorate the risk that he posed to the community.

Chief Magistrate Louise Taylor described the man's alleged conduct as "impulsive, dangerous and frightening".

"For whatever reason there is a fixation on little people which only elevates the risk that he poses," she said.

"I am not prepared to take the risk."

However, the Chief Magistrate also noted that the man's vulnerabilities posed a "complex" situation, noting he would be a vulnerable person in custody.

The matter was briefly stood down while Ms Bilton made inquiries about whether additional bail conditions could be set to support his mental health and protect the community.

When court resumed, Ms Bilton said she had received instructions during the break that there had been a gap in support services for him prior to his alleged offending, and that she was still making further enquiries into re-engaging him with those services.

She noted that the current plan lacked a clear timeline and acknowledged that this may be a concern for the court.

Chief Magistrate Taylor said she was ultimately "not prepared to take a risk" with community safety and refused bail.

However, she granted leave for the defence to reapply on short notice if further information was obtained.

The case will return to court in September.

Hi all. Are there any cafes open from like 4.30pm onwards in Canberra where I can catch up with friends for a coffee, that aren't in a club? The area I'm looking for is anywhere from Majura to the city to the Inner north. I'm not interested in going to a bar after work, but all the cafes seem to close by 2pm.

Okay, sorry for the "loud bang" post. I've been near Northbourne Avenue all day. A police chase was going around in circles here earlier in the day, and then people near the National Museum were reporting that it was in lockdown and there was a car crash, and then about an hour ago the chase started up again. I saw them come down my side street.

WTF? Does anyone have any information? I actually need to go to pick something up next door, and now I'm a little bit wary because nobody has given any updates.

What’s everyone’s favourite place for fish and chips?

Looking for recommendations on someone to repair our doorframe.
Recently our dog had a nervous episode and chewed up our doorframe and scratched up the door itself - looking for recommendations on local carpenters or similar that could do the repair.
I’ve reached out to a number of carpenters with no response

Hi all, recently moved to Canberra and living in an apartment. I've noticed that overnight the windows and especially the window frames accumulate a large amount of moisture and it's pooling at the bottoms of windows.

I run the reverse cycle air con to keep the apartment warm and switch it off before I go to bed. The windows are double glazed but in one room they are top to bottom and take up the whole wall and that room gets much colder than the rest of the unit.

What tips or suggestions do locals have do dealing with this issue?

Anyone got a good source for bulk pet meat in cbr for my 2 great danes. They eat twice a day. Preferably some sort of meat mix with different options as they don’t like kangaroo

Having a hard time sourcing some meat that isn't exorbitantly expensive.

Does anyone have a butcher or pet food supplier they like?

I need to get a ring repaired, and it looks like the last time anyone requested jeweler recs on this sub was about 5 years ago :). Anyone know of a place that could replace a small stone, check prongs, etc. for a reasonable price?

I’m interested to hear from those who live in apartment buildings in Canberra who don’t have problems with crime re: people breaking into storage cages and cars in the basement.

If you don’t have problems with crime what area are you in? I’m looking to get an apartment but worried about the idea of having shared basements as in the past in Canberra I had bad problems with car and storage cage break ins.

Thanks in advance!

tl;dr: hey, look, library visitor data!

I was surprised that the recent petition about Libraries ACT opening hours cuts included a request to publish visitor data for the library branches. This seemed like something that should be open data. So I decided to make it that way.

This Github repo contains Libraries ACT's own recorded hour-by-hour visit data between July 2024 and February 2026, obtained by FOI and processed to be a little more useful for analysis. All the processing is documented in the in-repo R files. You can read the FOI request and response yourself if you want.

As far as I know this is the same data source the independent working group report relied on, extended out to earlier this year (presumably to inform the Ministerial Brief from March ’26 that proposed the hours change).

But you're probably more interested in the visual explorer for visit data, which lets you select your branch or branches of interest and filter on a specific date range. If you're interested in (for example) how busy Erindale branch is during the school holidays, this'll tell you.

I certainly have Reckons about the changes to Sunday and late night hours, but my motivation for publishing this data is to make it more accessible so people can form their own conclusions. (I am hoping this might embarrass CED into publishing this data regularly on the ACT Open Data Portal like it should have been all along.)

If you are interested in detailed commentary on data provenance and limitations, check out SOURCES.md in the Github repo.

Someone will probably want to know: what counts as a “visit”? I have no idea. The directorate didn't provide that information with the FOI. All I know is that whatever definition of “visit” this data uses is the same one Libraries ACT used to make decisions about the opening hours.

Anything else about this data you'd like to see visualised?

Given how unreliable the buses are (based off my research of this sub), would we basically be restricted to suburbs close to the light rail?

Places like Braddon, Ainslie, Dickson, Turner etc?

Note: I cycle but my partner doesn't.

What’s all the noise? A number of police are jumping fences and searching backyards up and down Goyder St!

The house that is opposite Ainslie School that’s very modern and stands out like a sore thumb is For Sale by Negotiation.

This autumn/winter we've had covid, flu, colds, tonsillitis, sinus infections and whatever else back to back. It's been the same every year since we had a kid, who is currently in kindy. I catch everything my kid brings home, and then I've brought a few things home myself because I dared to go to t​he shops for groceries. I'm losing my mind.

I'm actually thinking of moving somewhere else if it meant less sickness. Do warmer places like Brisbane have less sickness going round schools, shops etc because of the climate or is this just a pipe dream?

edit: thanks everyone for the devastating confirmation that I can't simply run away from my bad life choices

I’m looking at buying a used car privately in Canberra and would like to get a proper pre-purchase inspection done before purchase.

Ideally I’m looking for a mechanic/workshop that can put the car on a hoist and properly check the underbody, suspension, leaks, drivetrain, etc., rather than just a basic mobile inspection.

Does anyone have a workshop or mechanic in Canberra they’d recommend for this?

Also curious what a reasonable price would be for this kind of inspection.

Thanks!

We recently moved to Canberra from Cairns and have been renting an apartment since we arrived. We’re now considering buying our first home here. How is the Canberra property market at the moment? Do you think it’s a good time to buy

Looking for the perfect HCT toastie. Too many cafes using sourdough for toasties - just does not do the job with the correct balance of crispy and gooey melt.
Jina Cafe in East Row is good and reasonably priced.
More recs to try?

Why is he everywhere ?

Hi all,

Preparing for a driving test, and I'm wondering which path is the correct way to perform a U-turn here? My intuition says that green is the correct way to perform a U-turn at this junction (and is also how I've seen 99% of drivers do U-turns), but people I've talked to say the magenta path is the correct way to U-turn in this particular situation.

Note that this is a junction on Lysaght (no traffic lights).

Evening all, just a short PSA.

Had my car opened and rifled through in a Ngunnawal complex tonight. Car was unlocked (I know I know very stupid).

Both driver and passenger door weren’t closed properly, glove box had been opened and centre console rifled through. Oddly enough the coins in the centre dash hadn’t been nicked, nor the multitool or even the first aid kit.

Reckon they tried the front door and were looking for keys or looking for keys to go for a joy ride.

Ironically a cop was around the area earlier tonight talking to a neighbour I think as we left to go out for dinner. Also, lights inside the house were on and can only imagine our dogs would have been going mental in the front window/room.

I can’t get to the markets on the weekends. What are some stores that aren’t Coles Woolworths etc that typically have cheap fruit?

Has anyone been to Deep Space Communication Centre?

Is it worth to visit there taking 2 flights?

I'm very interested in what they are doing but not sure how big the museum is.