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Birth of a Library

Birth of a Library
Bush Capital Pioneers
A Great Public Library
Our Heritage Revealed
From the Bush to Beyond
Housing the Collection

 

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Staff Members 1920s

enlarge imageStaff Members 1920s
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Pictorial Collection
(Harold White second from right, Kenneth Binns centre, next to White)

 

In the 1920s, Parliament House Melbourne was a privileged environment to work in:

play audioLife in Parliament House in Melbourne was a very different story to life in Parliament House in Canberra. The pace of life in Melbourne was very, very slow by comparison to anything that exists in Canberra today. We were authorised, when Parliament was not in session, to have an organised cricket or tennis match once every fortnight. When Parliament was in session it could be once a month. We had in the grounds of Parliament House a cricket pitch, a bowling green, a tennis court, and every lunch hour we quite casually played there for an hour or two without having to be concerned about time.

Andrew Osborn, Oral History, 1962

Meanwhile the collections continued to grow. Perhaps the most historically significant single acquisition of the early years of the Library was the purchase of the Endeavour journal of Captain Cook in 1923. It represents a moment of transition between the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library and the National Library of Australia, as the title of Commonwealth National Library was adopted shortly after the journal was purchased.

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