Parliament House Turns Twenty

I think GnT is arguing with me, so I’ll point out that Walter Burley Griffin’s plan did not include OPH (and he publicly thought it was a blight on the landsacape and should have been removed), it was the Australian Government who decided at the time of commisiioning the new one to leave OPH in situ as “a historic building of significance to 20th Century events”, or some malarkey to that effect…

Equivalent to ACT Heritage listing the pile of girders beside the GDE, claiming that they were once a focus of community spirit (thereby forcing it to remain one lane and ugly).

I kind of like NPH. It makes it clear which PH you are talking about.

The design of Parliament House (note its official name) incorporates OPH into the view down ANZAC Parade. If you look across the lake from the War Memorial OPH nestles quite snugly in front of Parliament House. As Thumper said. “postcard stuff” – very clever design. In fact, the white Carrara marble which forms the Great Verandah was chosen to link with the whiteness of OPH.

Painter Mandy Martin was HATED by Security for throwing a massive tanty when the security guards wouldn’t allocate staff on a Sunday to open up the Great Hall in response to an imperious order from her, so she could show her visitor ‘her’ artwork. She complained to the Joint House, who told her to shove it.

Just to clarify, Mandy Martin’s artwork is hanging in the Main Committee Room. Still a funny story though.

No, because there are still two Parliament Houses.
Unless they go with the original plan of “Knock down OPH and give an uninterrupted view down ANZAC Pde to Capital Hill”, there will be a need to differentaiate the old one from the new one.

who knows, it might end up like Paris’ Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in town.

Can we now please stop calling it ‘New’ Parliament House?

“I rode a horse over the top to the glare from security guards.”

Very cool indeed. Not many people could claim that one Pandy.

My dad’s older brother peeed off the Harbour Bridge during its opening ceremony – nah you trump that.

Best I’ve got for NPH is I was wandering around the government side one weekend about 10 years ago (was at a conference there), and walked straight past a cabinet meeting going with the door wide open. No security anywhere. I got some “looks” from those inside…

Wouldn’t happen these days.

And dined with Sen. John Woodley and his wife in the members’ dining room. Very nice.

Site visitor’s centre…

I remember going to the site video centre with Mum in school holidays and watching a timelapse film of the building being constructed.

Then my Grandma being thrilled to be invited to the opening by her old mate Joan child.

And finally a very chilly over-night stay on top of the house protesting against the first Gulf War in the early 90s…

It did, but they buggered around with it after NPH was done. It used to be 2 circles, that went all the way around!

I have very vague recollections of Capital Hill before building started, but can anyone tell me if the road we now know as State Circle existed prior to the completion of Parliament House?

When they first opened it, the walkways were all parquetry. and then the Wimmin marched over it in high heeled 80s shoes and it was pock-marked in a trice. Yeah I know but in those days they actually didn’t think of things like that. So they had to re-think it, and put those upholstered walkways, bordered by parquetry.

Thats so cool. How do you know all that stuff?

Back in the early 80s a ‘bundah boy broke his arm on saturday before the Monday he was due to start work at the House – endured it in agony for the weekend, turned up for his new job – “had an injury” and was on generous compo!

There was a select bunch of select people on the viewing platform on the flagpole on the day the RAF Red Arrows did a display in 1996 – one of the planes thundered toward the flagpole and turned 180 degrees a WHISKER (it seemed) before hitting it – nearly causing heart attacks.

A tiny unsecured balcony with a door unlocked to the outside, out of direct sight of Security was kept open well after 9/11 despite the security risk, largely so Nick Sherry could nip out on the first floor for a smoke – until frighteningly recently, ANYONE on the planet could have got in with a gun without going through security, with a hook and three metres of rope.

The (then) Art Curator was busted shoplifting in New York a few years ago. She used to be known as an ‘agent of death’ because the policy was to buy art from living artists – so she would turn up pretty much at deathbeds to secure deals!

Painter Mandy Martin was HATED by Security for throwing a massive tanty when the security guards wouldn’t allocate staff on a Sunday to open up the Great Hall in response to an imperious order from her, so she could show her visitor ‘her’ artwork. She complained to the Joint House, who told her to shove it.

The ‘red’ and ‘green’ Senate/Reps theme extends to very, very light shading of the plaster – natural alabasters or some kind of marble dust, sourced from Italy – on either side of the building.

When the front door, door to the Great Hall etc all the way past the PM’s office are opened, there isn’t even a glass pane in the line of sight from Mt Ainslie through to the base of the Land Axis – it used to be opened up once a year.

There is LOTS of “Joh for PM” graffiti all over the building, beneath the wall finishes.

The Joint House decided to skimp on just ONE aspect of the building when the budget had to be tightened. Not one cent was tightened up on the parquetry, soft carpet underlay etc – they inconsiderately tightened the gap in the ceiling, so cablers etc have a cruelly tight space to work in. It’s contrary to all OHS practices.

They’re re-planting the grass in the fake bushland, it was normal leafy grass, and I see they’re putting in that grass that grows on runners, and using a lot of sand. It seems to do a better job and needs less water.

I heard a similar story on the landscaping/irrigation of garden beds. They reckoned that would only last 10 years too. Water restrictions have probably got them to re-do it anyway I’d say.

School groups of us used to walk from school up onto that hill in the evenings. It was just gravel, boulders and some scrawny trees then. When they started building there, we had an outpost office up there in an atco hut to co-ordinate the hiring of workers. A mate was one of the plasterer formen, he reckoned because of the skills shortage, they were grabbing truck drivers and getting them plastering. He reckoned it’d all start coming down in a few years. When it was time to get the Speaker’s chair out of OPH, they couldn’t work out how to do it, and even contacted my grandfather who was a carpenter on the OPH, to find out if the chair was put into the chamber before it was built up, or if the chair came in bits. They couldn’t find any evidence that it’d been put together in situ but joinery standards in those days were pretty high.

The best thing in NPH is that black tank where you can’t see the water falling, it’s so precisely cut. I wish they’d re-open the roof.

I rode a horse over the top to the glare from security guards.

Will the Open Day be show off the Cathedral space we were made aware of over in this thread, comment 86113 from niftydog?

No chance mate. Only a selected few of us get to go in there.

Surely he was just exercising his democratic rights? :p

When I was in highschool a (very straight-laced) guy I worked with lost his licence for driving his dad’s car up onto the grass and doing doughnuts on it.

I was 8 when it opened, and every time a visitor came from interstate, or a school excursion took us there the highlight was definitely rolling down the grass.

It might sound a bit poncy, but I think that interaction with the building used to be such a highlight.
I think some of the security is overtop. I’d still quite like to roll down the grass now.

It was not designed to be a bunker, it’s much too open plan for that. If you can’t eat pizza on parliment house at 2am then roll down the grass from the top, it’s not a democracy.

What I would like to see in the next 20 years is the removal of that stupid fence on the roof.

The achillies heel of the Fairfax conglomerate, The Sydney Morning Herald

I’d have said that now Rural Press is part of Fairfax, the archillies heels of quality publishing *cough* would have stretched from Bourke to Guyra, but a great bunion would be reserved for our very own Crimes.

I reckon the security guards could write an interesting book on the happenings in the house…..

I first remember that very Canberran landscaping technique of putting decomposed granite across the entire forecourt. In the two weeks after opening the spectacular marble and wooden floors inside were cactus…. Hastily installed door mats stemmed the problem until some decent pebbles could be placed across the forecourt.

As a little kid here, I recall a lot of bitching about how much it was all costing, and particularly compaints about how many $00s each of those bumpy glass covers on the indicator lights outside each elevator was costing.
Recently I heard a project manager who worked on it on 666 mention that it had “an amazing appetite for money”.

But that said, I think that APH is one of the most amazing, inspired and symbolic seats of governance anywhere in the world. It makes the White House look decidely lame…

Will the Open Day be show off the Cathedral space we were made aware of over in this thread, comment 86113 from niftydog?

niftydog said :

No secrets from what I saw, but Parliament House does have some interesting places underneath it! For one thing, there’s hundreds of people who work down there – it’s not just “service tunnels and janitorial quarters”! There’s offices, workshops, kitchens, printing rooms, HVAC plants galour, store rooms, server rooms, several security offices, a detention cell, and even a television studio!

At the far south-easterern end of the building, underneath the Senate side ministerial wing, there’s an ENORMOUS void – probably 3 to four stories high in parts. Nothing but a partially excavated dirt floor and very long columns supporting the “ground” floor above. It’s affectionately called “The Cathedral”. It’s not drawn on any of the architectural drawings that I saw, but the door into it was on the drawings, needless to say our curiosity got the better of us! The only sign of it from above is the very hollow sounding wooden floor outside the elevators on the “ground” floor.

The HVAC plants and ventilation tunnels are particularly impressive. There’s enormous intakes and exhausts at the front and back of the building – the ones at the front form the circular structure that the road into the car park follows. The tunnels they connect to are about 30 meters below the “ground” floor and are big enough to drive through in parts – if you could get your car down there! They run north to south and our theory was that you could in fact walk from end to end and pop out at the ministerial car park!

Another story goes that a wall was built a meter or two out of place, so they just rebuilt another wall next to it and left a void in between. In a small service kitchen at the front of the building there’s a half-height door in the wall, open it up and you are confronted with endless blackness!

Loads of stuff really… some we couldn’t investigate, like the mysterious stair-case-like structure that went downwards from the basement at a point where we all thought it was nothing but bedrock below!

While studying back in the early 90s I did a night-time photography assignment on top of and around Parliament House that saw me spend a few hours on site for a couple of nights in a row. I’m not sure a security guard even bothered to say ‘good evening’ to me as I sat there snapping away with all my gear. Now you can’t even get your camera out before being subjected to a full body cavity search and presenting 456 items of ID.

As noted, I still wish you could walk up top, all hours of the day, with the freedom our democracy supposedly allows.

I was only 5 when the house opened, and my parents decided to drag us along to watch the festivities. We lived in the Belconnen area and because my parents thought that the traffic/parking would be a nightmare, we took an ACTION bus. Getting on at Belconnen, the bus filled up pretty quickly, not even standing room.

The bus we got on looked like one of the fleets first, so it wasn’t a supprise when driving along Parkes Way, just before the ANU tunnel there was a huge bang and the sound of glass breaking. The engine had blown up, and the rear window had dropped out.

We all got out and it was only about 5 mintues before the next completely full bus came along. About half our bus got onto this one, which was by now double its capacity, and we were on our way. I remember the Queen speaking and seeing the Great Hall floor being polished, but it will be the ACTION bus that will remain with me forever. Ah the memories.

See you all on Saturday.

I remember the days when as a bunch of scouts, you could walk up the hill with a bag, erect a tent on top of Parliament House, and get a photo, all before the security guards realised what you were up to…

Good times, those.

“I have always thought that as they have now stopped people wandering up the top of it”

Actually, you can still get to the top. You just have to get there from the inside (so that you have to go through the security check).