Qualla: Old Parliament House, Canberra

Old Parliament House, Canberra: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roke~commonswiki, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the day the building opened in 1927, an uninvited man stood among the dignitaries on the lawn. Jimmy Clements, a Wiradjuri elder some called King Billy, had walked roughly a week from Brungle mission to be there - not to celebrate, but to assert what he described as his sovereign rights to the land the new Parliament now occupied. He was one of only two Aboriginal people present as the Duke of York unlocked the front doors with a golden key and Dame Nellie Melba sang. Nearly a century later, the lawn in front of this white, low-slung building remains contested ground. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, pitched here in 1972, is now the longest continuous protest for Indigenous land rights anywhere on Earth.

Image: Roke~commonswiki | CC BY-SA 3.0

Old Parliament House, Canberra: Built to Be Temporary

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adam Carr at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Old Parliament House was never meant to last. Designed by the Commonwealth's chief architect John Smith Murdoch - who privately thought the whole project a waste of money - it was officially "provisional," intended to serve for a maximum of fifty years until something grander cou...

Image: Adam Carr at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Old Parliament House, Canberra: Red Chamber, Green Chamber

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bidgee, CC BY-SA 3.0. Inside, the building speaks in colour and timber. At its centre is King's Hall, lit from above through clerestory windows, its floor laid in jarrah and silver ash, dominated by a bronze statue of King George V. To one side lies the Senate, draped in the deep red of the upper hous...

Image: Bidgee | CC BY-SA 3.0

Old Parliament House, Canberra: Where History Happened

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. For sixty-one years, the nation's defining moments unfolded in these rooms. Australia declared war on Germany and Japan here. Prime Ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley lay in state in King's Hall. And on 11 November 1975 came the most extraordinary scene of all: after the Gover...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Old Parliament House, Canberra: A Museum of Democracy

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lachlan Rogers from Canberra, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the 1980s the provisional building was bursting and worn, and Parliament finally moved to its permanent home on Capital Hill in 1988. The question then was whether to demolish it. Walter Burley Griffin himself had objected to its placement decades earlier, complaining it block...

Image: Lachlan Rogers from Canberra, Australia | CC BY-SA 2.0