Mt Pleasant is one of four lookouts over Canberra city and the surrounding area.
It is probably the least visited of the four. Perhaps people are nervous and put off coming here as you have to drive through the grounds of the Duntroon Royal Military College. While there is security here there is absolutely no problem driving through Duntroon so please don’t let that deter you.
While I feel the best views of Canberra are from Mt Ainslie Lookout the view from here is still very worth the drive – giving a different perspective and a new angle as evidenced from the attached pictures. Looking backwards you also get good views of Duntroon Royal Military College and Jerrabomberra Wetlands.
Unlike Mt Ainslie and Red Hill Lookouts which are just that, atop this hill you will also find a memorial to gunners of all ranks of the Royal Regiment of Australian Artillery – more commonly referred to as the Royal Australian Artillery.
Inserted into the stone wall, symbolic of an early fort, you will see plaques naming the conflicts in which Australian Gunners served. The guns are 64-pounder RML Mark III guns manufactured in the 1870s and originally part of Sydney’s harbour defences at Middle Head. This is a designated saluting station from which Australia’s Federation Guard still provides 21-gun salutes on ceremonial occasions.
The Memorial was dedicated by HM Queen Elizabeth II on 9 March 1977.
One the road up to the lookout visit the grave of General Bridges, Australia’s highest ranking soldier in World War I. – see my separate review on General Bridges’ Grave.
While you are at Duntroon I also recommend a stop at :-
Changi Chapel and the ANZAC Memorial Chapel of St Paul.
Address: General Bridges Drive off Fairbairn Av, Duntroon
Directions: Within the grounds of the Royal Military College
For my next CANBERRA – INNER NORTH review click HERE.
For other Canberra reviews click HERE.
The Rambling Wombat 
I wonder what the origins of the name “Duntroon” is… my mother’s father’s family grew up in a very small town in Ontario called Duntroon. So many of the towns in that area were named after British/Scottish places.
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I have covered this in another review….to cut a longer story short it (or rather the farming property on which it was built) was named after an estate of the same name in Scotland. So your thinking was correct.
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Why was that estate important enough to have places and institutions named after it?
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in the mid 1800s there was no Canberra – A Mr Campbell, from Scotland, was awarded a large tract of land on what was then called the Limestone Plain by the then New South Wales State (one of 6 British Colonies that combined to become the Commonwealth of Australia – Australia for short – in 1901 ) government as compensation for the loss of a boat the Government had hired from him. Campbell was thus the first European settler in the now Canberra area and he named his estate Duntroon – after his estate in Scotland. The Military college, built on the former estate took its name. The Main building within the college prescient was Campbell’s main residence. In shortly upcoming reviews you will be able to read more of Campbell ( after who one of Canberra’s surburbs is named) and his decedents who subsequently lost most of their land when Canberra was created in the early 1900s
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Fascinating. What a resource you are! Thanks!
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