Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This silent, black-and-white clip shows governor-general Lord Denman at the ceremony to name Canberra on 12 March 1913. Lord Denman is seen arriving on horseback and then laying one of the foundation stones for the 'Commencement Column’, flanked by prime minister Andrew Fisher, in ceremonial black coat and silk hat, and minister for home affairs King O’Malley. The clip also shows guests and spectators, and military cadets who provide a guard of honour for the official party and mounted troops, as well as the firing of a royal salute. The clip includes intertitles.

Educational value points

• The ceremony to officially name Australia’s federal capital Canberra took place on 12 March 1913 on Capital Hill. It was a major public event and was attended by Lord and Lady Denman, Andrew Fisher, King O’Malley and many other dignitaries. Cadets from nearby Duntroon Military College formed a guard of honour for the official party and about 2,000 mounted troops from New South Wales also attended. A battery of field artillery fired a 19-gun salute as the governor-general and his party arrived.

• The ceremony was witnessed by about 500 invited guests, who were accommodated in a temporary grandstand, and about 3,000 spectators, who stood on each side of the stands. Most of the guests were brought to Canberra from Sydney and Melbourne on trains chartered for the occasion. The grandstand was decorated with the flags of the six states of the Australian Commonwealth to represent a unified nation, and also with the flags of the Dominions (self-governing states) of the British Empire to symbolise a united Empire.

• The ceremony involved the laying of three foundation stones for the Commencement Column to mark the founding of the capital city of Australia. Governor-general Lord Denman, prime minister Andrew Fisher and minister for home affairs King O’Malley each laid a stone inscribed with the name of the person who laid it and the date of the ceremony. The stones, granite blocks each weighing about 100 kg, were swung into position by a hand crane and then tapped into place with a trowel. Lady Denman then named the capital of Australia, Canberra.

• In 1912 the new ‘Federal’ Government invited the Australian public to suggest a name for the capital and received over 700 submissions that ranged from the humorous to the patriotic. These included 'Sydmelperadbrisho’, 'Cookaburra’, 'Wheatwoolgold’ and 'Kangaremu’, and the city’s function as the seat of federal government also inspired 'Democratia’, 'Empire City’, and the satirical 'Swindleville’. However, the Government decided on 'Canberra’, which may derive from a word meaning 'meeting place’ in the language of the Ngunnawal people, the Indigenous Australian inhabitants of the region.

• Such was the rivalry between Victoria and NSW over the site for the federal capital that a provision had been inserted into the Constitution directing the federal Parliament to choose a site in NSW but at least 100 miles (160 km) from Sydney. Numerous sites were considered, including Dalgety, Orange, Tumut, Albury, Armidale, Wagga Wagga and Cowra, before the Yass-Canberra area was chosen in 1908 and 2,368 square km were set aside as the Australian Capital Territory. At the time it was a treeless and sparsely settled plain used mainly for sheep grazing, with a population of 1,714 people.

• The Commencement Column, which was designed by John Smith Murdoch, the architect of Old Parliament House, was never completed. The First World War (1914–18) interrupted building in the new capital and it may be that the Commencement Column was abandoned at that time. The stone monument remained undisturbed on Capital Hill until it was relocated to a new position on the hill to make way for construction of the new Parliament House, which was opened in 1988.

• The Australian Constitution states that the governor-general is the commander-in-chief of the Commonwealth Forces, and in this clip Lord Denman (1874–1954) is shown wearing the sashed uniform of this office. In practice, the governor-general acts on the advice of government ministers, while the day-to-day operation of Australia’s defence forces is the responsibility of the Chief of the Defence Forces. Lord Denman was educated at the Royal Military College in Sandhurst and had a notable career in the military and the House of Lords. He held the office of governor-general from July 1911 to May 1914.

• Raymond Longford (1878–1959) was a pioneer of Australian cinema who directed more than 25 feature films as well as the Naming of the Federal Capital (1913). Longford and partner, actor Lottie Lyell, had the most creative partnership of the early years of Australian cinema, and their film The Sentimental Bloke (1919) is regarded as a classic. Longford lobbied for government support of the Australian film industry, particularly during the 1920s, when cinemas increasingly showed films from Britain and the USA at the expense of local films. Only five of his feature films have survived intact, along with fragments of four others.