CANBERRA DAY ORATION 2010

CANBERRA DAY ORATION 2010

When I undertook to speak on Canberra and its Battlers, I did not really appreciate the
immensity of the task. To do my subject justice would mean compiling a comprehensive history
of Canberra itself, because the story of Canberra is very much a chronicle of people triumphing
over adversity in a whole variety of circumstances. Please excuse me if I select those issues,
events and people that I am best able to describe. Allow me, too, to walk along paths familiar to
me personally.

Growing up in Queanbeyan, affectionately or derisively described by Canberrans as
“Struggletown”, I was told by my father that Queanbeyan was the mother of Canberra but that it
was a case of the child having outgrown the parent. Certainly in Catholic terms that is what
happened. Canberra only became a parish in its own right in 1928, having been in the
Queanbeyan parish prior to that. Its first parish priest, Fr Patrick Haydon, had been parish priest
of Queanbeyan since 1918.

   If I have a heart for the battlers of this world, I owe it initially to the influence of my father,
Ken Power, whom I witnessed looking after post-World War II refugees in Queanbeyan, being
an active member of the St Vincent de Paul Society, serving as a member of the Hospital Board
right up to his death and being part of the West Queanbeyan Progress Association. Most of his
working life was spent in Canberra, and the majority of that in various shops in Kingston:
Clearys, Reeces and Barakats where he was very much part of the lives of the people he served.
It was because he was working in Kingston that he chose to send me to school at St
Christopher‟s at Manuka where I did all my primary education before becoming a foundation
student of St Edmund‟s College in 1954.

When I was posted to St Christopher‟s parish as a newly ordained priest in 1966, Kingston and
Causeway were part of my “beat”. At that stage Causeway was about forty years into its history,
its buildings having commenced in 1925. In 1966, there were 122 cottages, the Causeway Mess,
a small boarding house for single men, the Causeway Hall and St Therese‟s Church which
shortly afterwards would be demolished to make way for expansion of the railway. At that time,
tucked away behind the railway station, Causeway was “out of sight and out of mind” and
certainly not part of any tourist destinations. In fact, the streets were not even named, so the
addresses were simply 1 to 122 Causeway.

If the rest of Canberra ignored Causeway or looked down its nose at it, there was a fierce pride
in the community among the residents themselves. While there was a great deal of poverty in
Causeway and many other social problems, the loyal community spirit meant that the residents
looked out for each other and shared one another‟s burdens in a way which I found to be truly
remarkable. Their houses were always open to each other and I personally felt humbled to be so
welcomed into the homes of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

I don‟t suggest that it was all “sweetness and light”. Causeway witnessed some pretty heavy
drinking, its share of illegal gambling and some other questionable activities. I remember visiting

a family one afternoon, sitting on the lounge next to the front door. The lady of the house made it
clear to us all that despite the constant knocking on the door we were to remain deadly silent. I‟m
not sure how she knew that it was a debt-collector seeking her attention! Early in the piece, I
became friendly with a family whose parents had split up, leaving the father to look after three
children, the youngest a lad of 8 who was a pupil at St Christopher‟s. George had been in a bit of
strife and I became a kind of protector to him. One day I was summoned by the nun teaching him
to tell me that he was in big trouble because he had been caught shop-lifting a chocolate from JB
Young‟s over the road. Sister told me that I had to read the riot act on him. Well, I was never
very good at reading the riot act but I did my best. “George, you‟ve been going so well lately and
now you turn round and get into this trouble. What made you do it?” He stopped and thought for
a while and said “Father, it must have been the devil.”

Jill Waterhouse‟s excellent community history, Canberra, Early Days at the Causeway,
illustrates, largely through the residents themselves, how Causeway has been such an integral
part of Canberra‟s history. During the Depression years, Causeway workers contributed to the
construction of the fledgling community itself as well as being part of the work-force for the old
Parliament House, the nearby Capital Theatre and the Manuka Swimming Pool, in addition to
countless other buildings taking shape across Canberra.

Even with the support of trade-unions, the men‟s jobs were often precarious and Causeway
women tried to add to family incomes through taking in ironing and helping with the cleaning of
homes in more affluent parts of Canberra. The Causeway Hall opened in 1926 and the
entertainment staged there provided much needed diversion in difficult times. It was also the
means of building up a community spirit for which Causeway would always be famous. The
sporting prowess of Causeway residents in many arenas is epitomized by the Causeway Rovers,
the highly successful Rugby League team. Gerry Kilmartin, a great family man who went on to
become an astute entrepreneur in Canberra, cut his teeth in Causeway. Significantly, from the
outset he was a leading figure in the St Vincent de Paul Society whose members, along with the
Salvation Army, cared for the poor of Causeway as well as the rest of Canberra.

The community pride and deep sense of belonging seen in Causeway was similarly evident in the
1920s workers‟ settlements of Molonglo, Westlake and Russell Hill. In reality, Causeway grew
up alongside nearby Molonglo which was situated basically where Fyshwick is found today.
Molonglo had served as an internment camp after the First World War, later becoming a camp
for the influx of builders needed for the establishment of the national capital. There were also
dairy farms in the area. Life was always a struggle for people in communities such as Molonglo.
Alan Foskett in his book The Molonglo Mystery describes a trick played on one of its characters,
Jacko, a Maltese fruiterer and his horse and cart. I can still remember Jacko from my childhood
days. He would ride his horse and cart to Queanbeyan where he would spend the occasional
Saturday drinking. Irrespective of Jacko‟s state of sobriety, his faithful horse always found his
way home to Molonglo. One day, however, the police intervened and Jacko finished up in court
and was fined one pound with ten shillings costs. Jacko‟s version of events was the he was fined
a quid and his horse ten bob!

Travelling across the border to Queanbeyan with its longer opening hours for drinking became a
feature of early Canberra life. There was even a taxi roster to cope with the heavy demand.

While this had its humorous side and provided an outlet for exhausted workers, undoubtedly it
put strains on family life and resulted in depleted finances in already difficult times. Eventually
after a plebiscite in 1928, provision was made for the sale of liquor in Canberra.

Father Brian Maher in his Planting the Celtic Cross spoke of inter-church cooperation in
providing meals during the Depression. “Each Sunday at Acton Hall and at Causeway, dinners
were provided by a roster of helpers; the Catholics attended on the first Sunday of each month as
organizers, but all creeds and those of none received assistance on all occasions. Some people
were disturbed when Father Haydon gave each unemployed man at the dinner a bottle of beer
and a packet of cigarettes; these luxuries were provided by Fr Haydon‟s sisters, Elizabeth and
Mary Haydon. The Good Samaritan nuns waived school fees, small as they were, on many
occasions. Canberra and Queanbeyan doctors, such as Drs Blackall, [John James], Clyde Finlay,
Mollison and Nott worked generously according to those who experienced those evil days. The
St Vincent de Paul Society did its part. Archdeacon Robertson of the Church of England was
closely involved with Father Haydon through all this work…The legacy of those days left a
legacy of a Canberra remarkably free from sectarian bitterness.”

Towards the end of this talk, I will embrace the subject of the Narrabundah Longstay Park.
Writing the history of the Park, Jenny Gall paints a vivid image of life in early Canberra.
“Significant numbers of construction workers first arrived in Canberra in 1912, building camps
of tents for single men and shanties for families. Construction was driven by the priorities
established by the Federal Capital Advisory Committee, meaning that workers built
accommodation for the senior public servants transferring from Melbourne before they had
satisfactory accommodation of their own. Any Canberra resident today will feel great sympathy
for those construction workers living under canvas, hessian bags and galvanized sheeting
throughout the extremes of the Canberra seasons. As for the residents not employed by
government, their requests for assistance with housing were met with indifference. They were
left struggling to survive and provide for themselves the services needed by a developing
community.”

It was in this context that there emerged a whole series of working men‟s quarters and later,
hostels, which have become part of Canberra‟s history and folklore. As a boy, I was aware of
Capital Hill and Hillside hostels with their largely migrant population contributing to the
building of post-World War II Canberra, with Reid House, Mulwala and Narellan catering for
public servants from interstate. Not all those residents would be classed as “battlers” but they
were among Canberra‟s first post World War II pioneers. For many the hostels were a staging
post, allowing the residents to size up the situation before moving on to more settled
accommodation. There is no doubt that conditions in the establishments which grew up between
the two world wars were basic and sometimes primitive. Living in them must have entailed a
daily battle to survive.

As a pupil of St Christopher‟s in the 1940s and 50s, one of my classmates was Dell Dickinson,
the youngest of thirteen children whose mother Edith was to become manager of the Kingston
Guest House, the position she held when I went back to St Christopher‟s as a young priest in
1966. Bringing up thirteen children must have been a battle in anyone‟s language, so Edith was
well equipped look after her guests who came from a great variety of backgrounds. The Kingston

Guest House was a series of eight cottages, originally built in 1927 as the Printers‟ Quarters
which provided family-type accommodation. When it became the Kingston Guest House it
catered for single men.

Frank Boyle has fond memories of living there from 1947 to 1950. Each cottage housed four
men, each with his own room, with a common room, toilet and laundry shared between them.
The guests of all the cottages shared the same dining room. According to Frank, it was simple
living: there was no heating or showers but there was a copper to heat up water for a bath, the
food was good, and it all came for two guineas a week. Frank described life at the Guest House
as a great leveller of men: there were labourers, public servants and workers from the Printing
Office. Frank himself worked at the Kingston Post Office and its proximity to the Guest House
was what attracted him to it in the first place. Often the men would obtain a barrel of beer on
Friday night and it would see them through till Sunday night. Many of the guests found a social
outlet at the Eastlake Tennis Club as well as in many of Canberra‟s other sporting activities. The
Catholic lads made their way to St Christopher‟s at Manuka for Mass.

A Home in the Capital: Stories about Life in Canberra’s Hostels could not have found a better
author than Alan Foskett whose own life in Canberra began at Reid House. With his brilliant
literary and historical skills, Alan has done justice to this important chapter in Canberra‟s social
history. It is amazing to think that in the 1950s, 20% of Canberra‟s population lived in hostels.
Not all of the residents were battlers, but many of them especially the Capital Hill, Hillside,
Eastlake, Riverside, Fairbairn, Turner and Ainslie residents would have been doing it tough. The
New Australians as they were then known faced the difficulties of separation from home,
learning a new language, making sense of a new culture on top of coping with the scars of war-
torn Europe. Many had wives or brides-to-be waiting to be reunited with them. Looking down
the names on the guest lists which Alan has provided, I recognized many who have made a great
fist of life here in Canberra after such difficult beginnings. It is surely testament to their own
resilience and inner resources as well the mutual support they gave each other. I am not sure how
much “outside” help they received. My colleague, Fr Tommy Wright, who himself grew up in
Kingston was a great friend to the Capital Hill and Hillside residents and visited them frequently.
Lots of those friendships forged in adversity continued for many years afterwards.

Alan Foskett draws on a 1966 book The Jennings Germans by Alfons Stuetz in order to highlight
the 150 carpenters in various workmen‟s hostels in late 1951 and 1952. “The Jennings Germans
were given this name by Albert Jennings who brought the carpenters to Australia, to help build
1800 houses in Canberra. It was a large contract by the Australian Government and at that time
difficult to fulfil. Everything was in short supply, manpower and materials. So Albert Jennings
gave Allan Jack from the Canberra Technical College and German interpreter Walter Schauble
from Melbourne the special mission to recruit 150 carpenters in Germany to supervise their
transfer to Australia. For eight months, Allan Jack and Walter Schauble interviewed and tested
2500 applicants, before making their final selection of 150 men.” Their first home in Canberra
was one of the workmen‟s hostels. The trials and tribulations of those good men who are such a
part of Canberra‟s history should not be forgotten as we prepare to celebrate our city‟s 100th
birthday.

Ainslie Village at the base of Mount Ainslie has been through a number of iterations: beginning
as Ainslie Workmen‟s Hostel in 1949, it became Ainslie Migrant Hostel in 1955 before
becoming Ainslie Guest House in the mid-1960s and Ainslie Village in the 1970s. It would have
to be said that its recent history has been a chequered one. At the moment it houses 170-180
people and is managed by Havelock Housing Association which caters for people in need of
low-cost accommodation. The Havelock House program came out of a 1984 ACT government
report into homelessness. There was a period when Centacare, the Catholic social services
agency, managed Ainslie Village. Given that the clientele was in need of a fair amount of social
assistance with issues such as alcoholism, illicit drugs, various forms of mental illness and
unemployment, there has always been a delicate balance of privacy, human rights and very real
human needs, not always recognized by the people themselves. There are a number of
government-funded and other programs operating within the Village all attempting to cater for
personal needs and in some way or another to build up community spirit. The Blue Door staffed
by the St Vincent de Paul Society provides meals for 60-70 people a day and in many ways a
heart for Ainslie Village. Mother Teresa‟s Missionaries of Charity from Queanbeyan visit from
time to time and are welcomed by those they serve.

As I understand it, Braddon‟s multi-story flats, Bega, Allawah and Currong, are ultimately
destined for demolition to make way for more modern developments. This would follow the
trend of what has happened with the Melba Flats in Belconnen, Burnie Court in Lyons, Lachlan
Court in Barton, Fraser Court in Kingston and other housing developments across Canberra.
Many began by providing housing for the middle-class, especially single people, later providing
low cost accommodation for poorer sections of the community but sadly often degenerating into
ghettos where public safety became an issue. I see such a regression as a sad one because many
of those locations in their prime provided much loved homes for their residents and a community
spirit which I spoke about earlier in relation to Causeway.

In 1999-2000 I was privileged to chair the ACT Poverty Task Group, a joint initiative of the
ACT Government and the ACT Council of Social Service. The project provided an opportunity
for individuals and community services sector agencies to share their experiences and
circumstances in order to demonstrate the level of need in the community. Some of the key
results of the research showed that:

      poverty definitely exists in the ACT (Using a national income measure, approximately
       one in 12 people was found to be affected by poverty)
      the profile of households in poverty was found to be different to other parts of Australia
       (In the ACT, households in poverty were more likely to belong to a single-person or
       single-parent household and members were less likely to be working)
      specific issues that contributed to poverty in the ACT included the costs of housing and
       transport
      Canberra‟s very affluence set community expectations and norms at a level which
       intensified poverty

The report provided guidance to government, business, the community services sector, and the
community at large about how to best respond to poverty in the ACT. The scriptures tell us that
the “poor will be with us always” but over the subsequent ten years I have been pleased to

witness a great number of initiatives on the part of government and community groups to
respond to a whole range of poverty issues in the ACT. I would also like to believe that public
opinion is becoming more sensitive to the needs of the battlers in our midst, and responsibility is
being taken at all levels to share their burdens.

Our Park Our Community: Stories from the Narrabundah Longstay Park records the drama
which took place among some of Canberra‟s quintessential battlers. I was asked to write the
foreword to this splendid book.

“2006 was a momentous year for the residents of the Narrabundah Longstay Park. The decision
to sell the Park to a developer meant that the 200 residents were threatened with the loss of their
community, their homes and, in some cases, the only asset they possessed. From the start, it was
clear that the residents were not going to give up without a fight. In many ways it was a „David
and Goliath‟ struggle: a group of ordinary people taking on the might of the ACT Government
and a well-heeled developer. Sadly, it also involved one of Canberra‟s most respected charities.
To the credit of all concerned, a solution was finally found which saw justice for the residents
and a satisfactory outcome for the other parties.

“It was my privilege in a small way to have been part of a campaign which was an eye-opener
for Canberra. The feisty group of residents over several months used their combined skills to
plan their strategy, make representations to Government, organize protests, publicise their
predicament through the media and open days, and generally make the rest of Canberra (and the
world!) aware of what was happening. I wrote at the time that Canberra needed people like them
to remind us of some very basic values: an appreciation of community, a willingness to share
burdens and an understanding of decent human values. I pointed out that Canberra would be
rightly judged by the way the Park residents were treated.

“I am delighted that these stories of an epic struggle have been gathered together because they
will become an integral part of Canberra‟s history. On behalf of the rest of Canberra, I say to a
great bunch of human beings: “Well done. We are proud to be in solidarity with you.”

At the outset of this talk I alluded to the impossibility of dealing with every aspect of my subject.
I am conscious that I have not spoken of the role of the Ngunnawal people who along with
Aboriginal people throughout Australia have experienced much hardship in their recent history.
Nor have I spoken of Canberra‟s spectacular natural environment which has survived and
flourished through the rigours of drought, bushfires, floods and the adaptation necessitated by
human development.

It is my hope that at this point of Canberra‟s history, we will not forget the important lessons of
the battlers who make up such an integral part of our story. Sir William Deane who himself grew
up in Canberra is fond of reminding us that a society is best judged by the way it treats its most
vulnerable members. The 2000 ACT Poverty Task Group Report pointed out that one in twelve
people in Canberra is affected by poverty. The comparative affluence of the rest of the
population can mask as well as exacerbate their deprivation. The issues faced by people with
mental health and drug problems, the plight of homeless people, the lot of indigenous people, the
challenges facing handicapped people and the responsibility of Canberra to do its part in

continuing to welcome refugees: all these need to be embraced by a caring community which can
then justifiably claim to be “the heart of the nation”. The great resilience of the human spirit so
often displayed by Canberra‟s battlers challenges the whole community to be in solidarity with
them.

(Bishop) Pat Power

National Library

Canberra

12 March 2010