'The Vatican City of Canberra': welcome to the tiny suburb of Oxley

Imagine the look on my face when I made a new friend at a baby shower last weekend who told me she’d grown up in “Canberra’s Vatican City”.

Hang on … Sorry …. What? Where was this sacred area of the capital she was talking about? How had I never heard of it?

It turns out she was talking about Canberra’s tiniest suburb: Oxley. Postcode 2903. Sandwiched between Wanniassa and Monash, a triangle-shaped locality fronting Drakeford Drive (and Lake Tuggeranong) on one side and Erindale Drive on the other. The miniscule suburb is just 1.08km2, consisting of 649 private dwellings and home to 1703 people. (Vatican City is just 0.49km2).

It’s basically one single street – Newman-Morris Circuit – running parallel to the sides of the triangle with a series of cul-de-sacs running off it. Like the Vatican, it’s a mini city within a city (though non-religious, of course) and an area very much coveted by families in Canberra’s deep south.

According to sales agent Colin Blunden from McIntyre Property, homes in Oxley, which was officially established in 1985, “rarely come up for sale”.

“Statistically, Oxley is the Canberra suburb where people stay in their homes the longest,” Colin says.

“So when homes do come up for sale, you get interest purely from people wanting to come and see what life there is like.”

Colin held the Oxley suburb record in 2012 for a cavernous six-bedroom home he describes as “like something from Gone With the Wind”.

Oxley is nothing like its giant neighbours Wanniassa or Kambah, Colin says, but more like another tiny Tuggeranong suburb down the road: Macarthur.

Housing in Oxley is a mix of townhouses and standalone dwellings; and while the McMansions on huge 1000sqm+ blocks along Newman-Morris are plentiful, it’s a suburb with limited amenity, including the lack of a set of local shops.

Do those who live there care?

“Not at all,” Colin says. “You’re a 10-minute walk from South.Point and the restaurants along Anketell Street, and just minutes from Erindale and Wanniassa shops.”

Sales agent Maya Rourke from McIntryre Property describes Oxley as the “hidden gem of the south”.

“If you want supreme location, this is it,” she says.

“It’s the ultimate location in Tuggeranong: so close to the town centre without being in the hustle and bustle of Greenway.”

Maya loves selling in Oxley because it mostly includes helping families settle into a home they’ll likely stay in a very long time.

“You can’t compare 2903 to any other suburb in Canberra,” she says.

“It’s got its own vibe, and it might be small, but it’s very well known down here in the south.”

View current listings in Oxley, ACT.