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


Beauehamp House c.1934

enlarge imageBeauhamp House c.1934
photograph
Pictorial Collection

Blue Moon Café, Alinga st, Civic Centre Jan 1953

enlarge imageBlue Moon Café, Alinga St, Civic Centre January 1953
photograph
Dwyer Collection
Pictorial Collection

While Laurie Fitzhardinge was left to find his own way across the paddocks, Larry Lake and Pauline Fanning (nee Dixon) were met at the station by Kenneth Binns. With a staff of 25, it was not difficult for Binns to keep a paternal eye on the young recruits:

play audioI didn’t think of Binns as being aloof and I probably had some contact, or more contact than a person would nowadays have with the head of the institution. In fact, he prided himself, especially with younger people who were away from home in being in loco parentis’ and he became quite hurt and offended if you didn’t discuss your personal problems with him. If you did you got quite sympathetic treatment but if you behaved otherwise you didn’t get very sympathetic treatment.

Pauline Fanning Oral History, 1988

The 1927 opening of Parliament House also signalled the birth of a capital city. In the 1930s, Canberra consisted of less than a dozen suburbs collected around three shopping centres: Civic, Kingston and Manuka. The city had one cinema, The Capitol, at Manuka. For most of the 1930s, Canberra was served by the Blue Moon Café and three Greek cafés. Beyond the nascent city, cleared paddocks gave way to mountainous bush.

 
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