OLD PARLIAMENT HOUSE AND CURTILAGE HERITAGE MANAGEMENT PLAN 2008–2013

D. History of the Place
Part D – Appendices
280 Old Parliament House and Curtilage Heritage Management Plan 2008–2013
give protection against Canberra’s harsh summer sun. All of the flooring in the building was also of Australian
timber, except for a small amount of Baltic pine used for flooring in the press rooms. On the lower floor, all
of the floor bearers and joists were made of Australian hardwood, but imported oregon was used for the joists
in the main floor, upper floor and flat roof, and for the main trusses over the legislative chambers. Oregon
was used because it was felt that, as a seasoned timber in these areas, it would produce less movement and
therefore have no deleterious effect on plastered ceilings. This, however, was soon to prove an illusory hope. 25
Construction of the Provisional Parliament House was completed in 1927 at a cost of £644 600, a figure
almost three times in excess of the original cost estimate of £220 000. A further £250,000 was spent on
furnishing the building. At the time of its completion, the building covered four acres of ground and included
a total of 182 rooms, plus the two legislative chambers. Surrounding the House, another 132 acres were in
the process of being converted - not without difficulty - into lawns, gardens and recreational areas, including
tennis courts, a bowling green, cricket pitch and at some point a putting green. Among the guiding principles
of the layout and planting of the grounds were that the levels should be symmetrical, that the design should
be of a formal character and accentuate the land axis running to Mount Ainslie and that the plantings should
be ‘loose and low’ such that they would not dwarf the flat profile of Parliament House or obscure views of
it. Another, far more prosaic principle was that grass needed to be grown in the areas around the House,
which had been a building site for over three years, in order to keep the dust down. The varieties of grass
seed planted were specially chosen on the advice of T.C. Weston, the Superintendent of Parks and Gardens in
Canberra. With the official opening of the provisional building approaching, great haste was made to develop
lawns at least in the front and at the sides of the House. On ground that had not yet been perfectly levelled,
grass seed was sown hurriedly and under conditions where insufficient water was available to foster luxuriant
growth. The result was acceptable for the opening, but development continued in fits and starts for a number
of years. Thus, the areas at the rear of the House were only planted with grass in late 1927. Excavations for
the ornamental pool in the grounds in front of the House were carried out in 1929, but then work lapsed. For
several years afterwards, the excavated area, overgrown with weeds, presented an eyesore in front of Australia’s
Parliament. The work was only completed after complaints about the state of the unfinished pool in 1933. 26
The Provisional Parliament House was officially opened by the Duke of York, later to become King
George VI, at a ceremony in Canberra on 9 May 1927. The ceremony did not actually mark the
opening of a Session of Parliament; it was merely the continuation of the 10 th Australian Parliament
which had opened in Melbourne in January the previous year. Immediately following the opening
ceremony, Parliament adjourned to re-convene on 28 September, more than four months later.
While Parliament was in recess, a sad event in the shape of the first death to occur in the new building took place
when the Clerk of the House, Walter Gale, collapsed and died in his office - now part of Room M86 - on 27 July.
He was succeeded by John Robert McGregor who, at the resumption of Parliament in Canberra on 28 September,
himself collapsed in the House of Representatives Chamber and died that night in the small Canberra Hospital. 27
Despite the comfortable appointments to the new building and its handsome, dazzling white appearance in
the Canberra landscape, serious problems began to manifest themselves as soon as Parliament commenced
regular sittings in the building. The first of these was acoustic difficulties in the chambers. Complaints
were made about the acoustics from the very start of sittings in the building, with one Member claiming in
November 1927 that it was impossible for most Opposition Members to hear what Government Members
were saying on the opposite side of the Representatives Chamber. Sir John Butters, Chairman of the Federal
Capital Commission - a powerful statutory body established in January 1925 to oversee and accelerate the
development of Canberra - quickly brought in experts to try to rectify the problem. This resulted in the laying of
felt floor coverings over the rubber flooring in both chambers in 1928 and the hanging of heavy drapes. Later,
green carpet was laid in the Representatives Chamber in 1929 and red carpet in the Senate in 1936. 28
In this same early period, there emerged what would become one of the most prolonged and intractable
problems with the building: trouble with the roof. In spite of appearances to the contrary, the first intimation
of problems was actually not as serious as it seemed. As was not wholly unexpected, the oregon beams and
25 Memorandum, C.S. Daley to Secretary, Home and Territories Department, 7 August 1926, CRS A1/15, item 26/15054; ms minute, Robert P. Christie, ‘Renovation and Maintenance of External Woodwork of Parliament House’, 7 March 1949,
CRS A6728/12, item 191/6; W.I. Emerton (?), ‘Parliament House - Canberra. A.C.T. Notes on the Operation and Allied Problems requested by the Scottish Architectural Student’, 1976, p. 3, CRS A6728/1, item 156/1.
26 Gavin Souter, Acts of Parliament, Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 1988, p. 219; Grover, A Descriptive Guide to Canberra, p. 35; letter, Owen to G. Sydney Jones, 16 March 1925; memorandum, Murdoch to H.M. Rolland,
‘Parliament House - Grounds, etc.’, 24 July 1925; memorandum, Superintendent, Parks and Gardens Section, to Assistant Secretary, Works and Services Branch, 20 March 1933, CRS A292/1, item C3516; memorandum, F. U’Ren, Secretary,
Joint House Department, to Secretary, Federal Capital Commission [FCC], 2 March 1928; memorandum, Alex E. Bruce, Acting Superintendent, Parks and Gardens Branch, to Chief Commissioner [FCC], ‘Areas - Eastern and Western Sides
and rear of Parliament House’, 6 March 1928; memorandum, J.H. Butters, Chief Commissioner, to Minister for Home and Territories, 7 March 1928, CRS A1/15, item 30/1344; L.D. Pryor, ‘Landscape development’, in H.L. White (ed.),
Canberra, A Nation’s Capital, Sydney, Halstead Press, 1954, pp. 221-2.
27 Frank C. Green, Servant of the House, Melbourne, Heinemann, 1969, pp. 65-6; Souter, Acts of Parliament, pp. 229-30.
28 Extract from Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates [House of Representatives], 23 November 1927, in CRS A1/15, item 30/1344; Howard Tanner and Associates, ‘Provisional Parliament House Canberra: The Conservation Plan’,
report for the National Capital Development Commission, February 1986, pp. 14-1, 14-2.