Sir John Hackett Essay Competition

The National Centre of Biography has accepted an invitation from the Hackett Community Association to join them in promoting a biographical essay competition.

The competition is open to schoolchildren living in the inner north Canberra suburb of Hackett and has as its topic ‘The person after whom your street in Hackett is named’.

The suburb itself was named after Sir John Winthrop Hackett (1848-1916), newspaper owner and editor, and conservative member of the Western Australian Legislative Council, who reluctantly became a pivotal supporter for the federation of the colonies in the 1890s. 

Streets in Hackett are named after Australian scientists, many of whom feature in the Australian Dictionary of Biography including chemist Albert Rivett, geologists Cecil Madigan, Alfred Selwyn, Joseph Jukes and Ernest Skeats, veterinary scientist John Gilruth, engineer Clive Steele, zoologist William Dakin, anatomist William Colin Mackenzie, and conchologist Sir Joseph Verco.

Professor Melanie Nolan, General Editor of the ADB, has agreed to help judge the competition and to publish the winning essays on the NCB’s website.