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Environa
Jennifer Horsfield investigates H.F. Halloran’s failed vision As Canberra debates the need to attract more residents and expand into new suburbs, it is timely to recall a much earlier experiment in real estate development. Called ‘Environa’, it took place over the ACT border some 80 years ago, launched and promoted by the extraordinary figure of Henry Ferdinand Halloran. Halloran, who was born in Sydney in 1869, the son of an architect, became a licensed surveyor in 1890. He also obtained qualifications as a valuer and conveyancer, and in 1897 was in business as Henry F. Halloran and Co, specialising in land and property matters. During his long career in real estate, he launched land development schemes in many parts of New South Wales, from Lithgow to Coffs Harbour, and areas near Queanbeyan. He is especially well known for his 1916 promotion of an ambitious scheme for ‘Pacific City’, as he called it, near Jervis Bay. He wrote a 10-page brochure, extolling the virtues of this project as ‘the Southhampton of NSW’, and emphasising the future promise of the region, with a bustling port to serve the south-east region and a railway connecting it to Canberra. Hundreds of people bought blocks over the following decade, but development never went ahead, and then the Great Depression killed the whole project off.
Ever eager for new markets and challenges, during the First World War Halloran turned his attention to the Queanbeyan district, whose proximity to the new Federal Capital Territory made it very attractive to the astute land speculator. From 1915, land sales in Queanbeyan were dominated by the entrepreneurial figure of Halloran. In 1924 he launched the Canberra Freeholds Estates, and planned to sell various subdivisions in and around Queanbeyan. In the years after the war, as Canberra’s development at last seemed to be getting under way, Halloran unashamedly promoted the connections with the national capital. His intention was to advertise the freehold nature of his land, while making it clear that the blocks on sale were close to the capital city (where of course all land was leasehold). In 1923, having established an office in London, Halloran launched a campaign to attract English investors. He advertised ‘a limited number of choice freehold Building and Business plots at both Canberra and Jervis Bay (the City’s Port)’, for as little as one pound per month. This advertisement, printed on the back of a British Inland Revenue form, aroused great disquiet among federal politicians back home, implying as it did that freehold land was actually for sale in the federal capital itself. Questions were asked in parliament, and Halloran had some fast talking to do to persuade parliamentarians of the honesty of his motives. One of Halloran’s most ambitious acts of real-estate development and promotion took place at ‘Environa’. This land was a subdivision of the grazing property of Hill Station, and was bought at auction by Halloran in 1924. ‘Environa’ is still to be found on local maps, and lies just east of the railway line as it goes past the industrial estate of Hume. None of the blocks of land were ever sold to the public, as the scheme was thwarted with the onset of the Great Depression. ‘Environa’ remains a private grazing property, now owned by the Larcombe family and managed by David Larcombe, Henry Halloran’s grandson, who has a strong interest in his grandfather’s remarkable career, and is very keen to preserve the stories and historic relics connected with Halloran’s dream of a splendid estate on the edge of the national capital.
Halloran’s 1927 sales broadsheet for the ‘Environa’ estate, a beautifully designed and coloured lithograph, proclaims it as ‘a magnificent subdivision, the design is a masterpiece of town planning on beautiful undulating land with far reaching views and overlooking the wonderful City of CANBERRA itself’. Halloran, who among his other talents showed great skill as a draftsman, drew up the subdivision plans himself; they show the influence of Walter Burley Griffin, a contemporary and one-time colleague of Halloran. Roadways extended in wide circles around the central avenues, with wonderful vistas north towards the new Parliament House and beyond, to the Brindabellas. Halloran took great pains to choose street names that would reflect the estate’s proximity to Canberra: Speakers Avenue, Hansard Road, Electoral Square, Trade Place and so on. In developing ‘Environa’, Halloran was marketing not just blocks of land, but a life-style: a ‘dress-circle’ estate with easy access to the new capital, good shopping facilities at nearby Queanbeyan, and all the views, space and rural ambience that have come to be associated with country estates. His plan provided for over 1700 blocks and included sites reserved for business, banks, theatres, recreation and parks. A number of bandstands, including one at Outlook Hill, the highest point on the estate, were to be centres for community recreation and congenial settings for the performance of groups like the Queanbeyan Volunteer Fire Brigade Brass Band. Two of these structures are still standing on the property. Halloran arranged for the planting of picturesque squares of exotic deciduous trees, and a visitor to the property nowadays can look out over a vista of well-established plane trees, oaks and cedars, with poplars lining the boundary fences.
Halloran also indulged his liking for rustic stonework, which was a feature of many of his estates. (The decorative stonework at Tanilba, his Port Stephens estate, has New South Wales heritage protection and is a local tourist attraction.) It is in these rustic, often massive structures that Halloran’s eccentric genius is seen most clearly, for they still stand on the property of ‘Environa’, as monuments to an unrealised dream. It’s not clear whether Halloran built them to promote development and to make photographs of the estate more attractive to potential buyers, or whether he was just indulging his own artistic fancies. Parliament Boulevarde, which was to be the main entrance to the estate, is approached through an impressive stone arch. David Larcombe has in his possession Halloran’s original sketch of the arch, done in pen and pencil on notepaper from a Queanbeyan hotel, and dated 1927. Following Halloran’s grandiose design, his stonemason, Mr Powe, constructed the arch out of the granite, quartz and porphyry found on the property. Through the archway one views a wide and imposing avenue of stone pillars, culminating in a 12-metre-high stone obelisk. Until recently, the column was topped by a marble bust of Sir Henry Parkes, surveying from on high the grand vista of the national capital. (Halloran had discovered the bust, the work of Italian sculptor Giovanni Fontana, at a second-hand shop in Sydney and thought that the Father of Federation would make an ideal addition to his planned estate. A similar bust by Fontana stands in the council chambers in Parkes, NSW.) However, in recent years, gunshot damage by vandals has led David Larcombe to remove the bust to a safer place. It now greets the visitor at the entry to his homestead, and is still imposing, in spite of the chips on Sir Henry’s ears and nose.
Another unusual relic which Halloran once had on display at the estate was the main topmast of the cruiser HMAS Sydney, which sank the German raider Emden in 1914. It was erected in the central part of ‘Environa’ as a memorial, and also as an expression of Halloran’s family link with this historic episode: in 1918 his cousin, Ethel Alison MacPhillamy, married John Glossop, the captain of the Sydney, and hero of the Sydney–Emden engagement. (The mast eventually rotted at the base and collapsed, and is now on display at the Huskisson Museum near Jervis Bay.)
In the 1970s the Larcombe family built their own modern residence in an area of the estate which Halloran had called ‘The Lobbies’, approached through an archway joined by two decorative stone pillars. The house itself is built within a circular park surrounded by an ornamental stone wall, with sweeping views across to Jerrabomberra Creek and beyond. It’s clear that Henry Halloran chose some of the best real estate near Canberra for his developments. Even though none of the blocks at ‘Environa’ were ever sold, the estate was well known to many Canberrans in the inter-war period. In early post-war years, when Sunday competition football was frowned on by Canberra authorities, ‘Environa’ became the unofficial football oval for the capital, and a race track on the flats down near Jerrabomberra Creek attracted keen punters. As well, two of the bandstands and surroundings were used as a setting on Easter Monday 1929 for the Tuggeranong Picnic Sports Carnival. These days, however, the bandstands, the grand archways, the column and decorative stonework are all that remain of Halloran’s imaginative scheme. As new roads and houses spill over into the grasslands of Tuggeranong, the structures which Halloran built, just over the border, stand like the melancholy ruins of some abandoned city. JENNIFER HORSFIELD, a Canberra writer and historian, came across H.F. Halloran’s story while researching a biography of his cousin, Rania MacPhillamy. She previously wrote on Mary Cunningham for National Library of Australia News |
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