Our Nation's Album: Link to home page
Bush Capital Pioneers
Birth of a Library
Bush Capital Pioneers
A Great Public Library
Our Heritage Revealed
From the Bush to Beyond
Housing the Collection

Portrait of Kenneth Binns (1882-1969)

enlarge imageUnknown photographer
Portrait of Kenneth Binns (1882–1969)
photograph
Pictorial Collection

 

Although Federal Parliament now had its own building, and through this its own Parliamentary Library, there remained the problem of the growing collections of material considered to be of national significance. It would take a further nine years before the National Library found a home on Kings Avenue in 1936.

In 1928 Kenneth Binns succeeded Arthur Wadsworth as Head Librarian of what would become the National Library. Staffing the Library was of course an important issue for Binns, and in the mid-1930s he began to recruit young graduates to Canberra. Laurie Fitzhardinge arrived in 1934, Clifford Burmester in 1935, Pauline Fanning in 1936 and Larry Lake in 1937. Although Fizhardinge would leave the Library in the 1940s to pursue an academic career, Lake, Burmester and Fanning were to have long and distinguished careers within the National Library.

In 1934 Canberra was very much an outpost, ‘the bush capital’, with a population of under 10 000 people. Laurie Fitzhardinge described his bleak arrival:

play audio

I arrived in Canberra in June 1934, midwinter, at five o'clock in the morning as one did in those days, on the train. I was told that I could stay in my berth for a while if I wanted to. As soon as it became daylight I went out. There was snow on Mount Jerrabomberra, a wide open plain surrounding the railway station, the only building in sight was a garage, where there's still a garage now, and that was the only building anywhere in sight. So I staggered out onto the station. I found that the taxis, if any, had all gone back home and that the bus had forgotten to come down. There was nobody there to meet me or to meet anyone else as far as I could see—I suppose the other people had caught the taxis … So I left my suitcase at the railway station and having got some directions walked across the paddocks to Brassey House.

Laurie Fitzhardinge Oral History, 1983

Railway Station 1930s Brassey House 1930s

Railway Station 1930s
photograph
Collingridge Collection
Pictorial Collection

enlarge imageBrassey House 1930s
photograph
Pictorial Collection
  previous page
next page