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Unknown
photographer
Portrait of Kenneth Binns (18821969)
photograph
Pictorial Collection
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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:
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
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