Australia · Australian Capital Territory · Canberra
Harrison, Canberra — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Harrison sits in Canberra's Gungahlin district, named for the planner Peter Harrison and ringed by Franklin, Throsby, Kenny and the Mitchell estate.
About Harrison
Where to stay in Harrison
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Gungahlin Town Centre is the reference point. Harrison lies roughly two kilometres east of it and about ten from the centre of Canberra, which makes a bed here suburban by definition rather than central to anything. The neighbours set the tone.
Franklin, Throsby and Kenny hold the residential sides while Mitchell brings an industrial estate to another, so the streets named for waterfalls, plains and tablelands are the part of Harrison worth sleeping in.
About Harrison
What are the main landmarks in Harrison?
Nothing here is on a monument list. The suburb's interest is in what its names point at: Peter Harrison, the city planner who was instrumental in reviving Walter Burley Griffin's plan for the National Capital, and behind him a whole vocabulary of natural features. Waterfalls, plains and tablelands.
Those categories supply the street names, so a walk through Harrison reads as a glossary of landforms rather than a route between sights, and the nearest centre of any scale is Gungahlin Town Centre.
What is the history of Harrison?
Harrison was established in 1991 within the Gungahlin district, ten kilometres out from the centre of Canberra. The name honours Peter Harrison, a former city planner remembered above all for reviving Walter Burley Griffin's plan for the National Capital, so the suburb commemorates the drawing of the city it belongs to. The theme did not stop there.
Street after street took the vocabulary of natural features instead of further personal names, and that split, one planner at the top and waterfalls below, is most of what the Australian Capital Territory records about the place.
Where is Harrison?
Two kilometres out. Harrison lies east of Gungahlin Town Centre and about ten kilometres from the centre of Canberra, with the Mitchell industrial estate alongside.
More areas in Canberra
Updated September 2026