It's hard to imagine the Australian capital, Canberra, without its centrepiece, Lake Burley Griffin, yet just over 50 years ago, its critics almost saw it eliminated. In such an eventuality, the city would have been deemed "a failure".
It was a mid-Autumn day 55 years ago when the skies over Canberra erupted after seven parched months. As the rain finally fell, the dusty remains of a golf course and racetrack, and the skeletons of makeshift and more substantial abodes both, disappeared beneath the artificial new lake at the capital’s heart.
The moment had taken almost as long to reach as the time that’s passed since. And drama, criticism, controversy - and tragedy - have shaped Lake Burley Griffin as much as the bulldozers that altered the landscape in preparation for it.
On October 17, 1964, with the sails of small boats billowing behind him where once there was little but open countryside, Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies declared “with a feeling of great personal delight … this Lake to have been inaugurated by me - a quarter of an hour ago!”
While his speech was short, it was back in 1911 that LBG’s American creators, Walter and Marion Griffin, first crafted it as the pièce de résistance of their “ideal city”.
In the interval, there’d been as much water under the bridge as there was, now, water under the bridge - not least, the chief designer effectively being sacked near on as soon as he'd begun work to see his plan come to fruition.
Walter’s influences had included the "father of American landscape architecture", Frederick Olmsted, one of those responsible for New York’s Central Park - built from the 1850s as part of a concerted effort to put the city “on the map as a world-class destination”.
Similar to the Big Apple’s showcase, with its various man-made waterscapes that emerged from swampland, Canberra's lake was to grow out of a willow-clogged river that meandered across a desolate floodplain.
Once complete, the 11km-long aquatic centrepiece covered nearly seven square kilometres - the equivalent of 1200-odd football fields. While smaller than originally intended, it had been saved from being axed completely.
Essentially cleaving the city in two geographically, equally did it divide opinion.
The selection of the site for the Australian capital was partly due to its existing water features - two rivers, Queanbeyan and the Molonglo, feeding into the second longest in the country, the Murrumbidgee - and the ambitious potential this afforded.
As Menzies would allude much later, centralised water bodies have long been associated with the world’s great cities.
Surveyor Charles Scrivener’s topographical surveys demonstrated the potential - and confirmed the desirability - for the creation of such an ornamental component.
With their artfully balanced, geometric design incorporating such a concept, the Griffins' submission was “the grandest” of the international competition entries for the planned First City.
At its core were three Basins - Central, West and East - and two larger lakes, further east and west.
Praised for its “simplicity and clarity”, it didn't stop some, including those who wielded a level of bureaucratic heft, declaring it “grandiose”.
Public agitation over the proposed watercourse also grew. Concerns ranged from flooding, water quality, it turning into mud flats, the loss of valuable acreage, becoming a fog trap, attracting mosquitoes and inevitably, its cost.
There was also all those high-profile members of the Royal Canberra Golf Course and the Acton Racecourse (these facilities taking up most of its potential West bed), that expected consideration.
This “community and stakeholder opposition” eventually reached “near hysterical proportions”.
As a result, the “paper” Lake would be modified, excised, revised, remodelled and rescaled. Even Scrivener himself was involved in adjusting the original. This included eliminating Griffin’s weirs to instead incorporate a single dam and a more “organic shape”.
So dramatic were the alterations, by the early 1950s, what was left was described as little more than “a central basin and a ribbon of water”. The East Lake - essentially where the industrial suburb of Fyshwick is today - was gone altogether and the West Lake reduced to near non-existence.
Having reached an unfathomable impasse, contributing to yet more stalling of the capital’s momentum, Menzies stepped in. For the first time in Canberra’s sporadic development, a single, powerful body responsible for its cohesive progress was created.
In 1957, a fellow by the name of John Overall was appointed as the inaugural Commissioner of the National Capital Development Commission.
The priority of the 44-year-old architect and war hero was to fulfill the Griffin plan - and that meant he needed to build a lake. Immediately, its western component was reinstigated and a proposal for a bridge between the War Memorial and Parliament House, contrary to the stated vision, was knocked back.
Still though, additional amendments were made, with British architect, Sir William Holford, employed to draft further refinements.
As other significant undertakings kicked off in rapid succession, in 1959, a major spanner was thrown in the tracks of the bulldozers when the Prime Minister headed off to visit the Queen.
In his absence, the initial million pounds agreed by Cabinet to jump-start the massive project were removed from the Budget.
Rather than try to convince those responsible otherwise, Overall patiently marked the days until the return of the PM. As the plane touched down at the Canberra Airport, the Commissioner was waiting for his boss – on the very tarmac itself.
The necessary finances were promptly reintroduced and when approved by Parliament in 1960, the very next morning, Overall had that earth-moving equipment ready to roll.
Trees, sporting facilities, farms and houses made way for what would become the bottom of a lake.
Hundreds of workers removed thousands of tonnes of soil, deep enough to dispel insect infestations, prevent weed growth and provide for boat keels. "Drainage blankets" lined it to prevent the water seeping away. Islands that would become features were created and two bridges to traverse the watercourse were built (also tall enough for the masts of sailboats to pass beneath them).
Up rose the dam to hold back the Molonglo River and which would come to be “ranked fifth of 25 dams in Australia with heritage listing”.
Well inside the four year timeframe the Commissioner had promised the Prime Minister, on September 20, 1963, the five gates of the 33m high (108ft) concrete wall named for Charles Scrivener, were locked in place.
Thousands lined its 319m length - diplomats, Parliamentarians and schoolchildren alike - to watch history being made.
The Dam provides flood control for the Molonglo-Queanbeyan section of the Murrumbidgee catchment and will be able to accommodate a one in 5,000-year flood. The only time in the Dam’s history that all five gates were opened was in the flood of 1976.
Then came the dry spell which, as it dragged on, offered sustenance to the band of critics.
The saving grave came on April 29, 1964; finally did the water reached the brim of its carefully cultivated space.
Six months on and LBG was welcomed and embraced as Canberra’s focal point - socially, economically and environmentally: “A lake that will complete the amenities of life … really, there’s something here for all of us", said the man who did not wish it named for him as suggested, Prime Minister Menzies.
Soon after, John Overall, son of a Sydney publican, was knighted for his professional efforts. (As it turns out, one of three Sir Johns responsible for Canberra’s earliest development - the other two, Sir John Sulman, from 1921 to 1924, and Sir John Butters, 1925-1930).
In a quarter of the time it took to attain the engineering marvel - the largest of its kind in Australia - LBG was adorned with monuments and institutions of national significance.
Mid-1970s and Canberra was recognised as "a model of best planning and modern landscape design". Attractions continued to be added including the Captain James Cook Memorial on the Bicentenary of the first sighting of the east coast of Australia. (It's water jet fountain is similar to that found in the Resevoir in Central Park, NY).
Following on its success, other waterbodies were also created throughout the capital. Lake Ginninderra on the furthest western border was constructed in 1974 and Lake Tuggeranong in the south would be developed in 1987.
As the status of LGB evolved, so too, did its controversies.
Urban legends encompassing such things as an unexplained "beast" lurking in its depths. [https://citynews.com.au/2017/overall-beware-creepy-creatures/].
Then there are the bodies allegedly swept into it during flood events. More verifiable was that human remains had in all likelihood leaked into it between 1969 and 1986 courtesy of a faulty drain at the Canberra Morgue which stood on its shores at Kingston.
Along with the more mysterious elements, there’s been plenty of tragedy too: accidental drownings, suicides - and potential homicides.
"The lake's serenity is transformed by high winds and its icy water can be treacherous. When the rivers that feed the lake are in flood hazards are increased because of floating debris and strong currents. Boating mishaps are common. Within three months of its inauguration, three people had drowned in the lake."
One of the most harrowing cases involved a local woman who disappeared in 1976. For more than a decade her whereabouts were unknown. Then in 1989, police conducting a training exercise, located a long-submerged car in Lotus Bay (between the Canberra Yacht Club and behind the Hyatt), the occupant confirmed as the missing hairdresser. Given the length of time, it was difficult for the Coroner to determine the cause of death, suggesting it was either drowning or strangulation. No answers have ever been forthcoming either way.
Of a slightly less ominous though still potenitally dangerous nature, the Lake is also known for frequent poisonous algal blooms.
Reclamation and development of its foreshores has resulted in the latest disputation and seen the rise of of the Lake Burley Griffin Guardians.
And then there's been the recent protest calling for it to be drained in response to drought-affected regional towns.
Despite all of that, today, Lake Burley Griffin is the heart of the capital, referred to as “Canberra’s greatest treasure” and listed on the Register of the National Estate as a place of "significant natural and cultural heritage".
More than just recreational, it's also created important ecological environments.
The Canberra Times wrote of it: “The fulfilment of the lakes must be regarded as something far more important than the mere provision of facilities for aquatic sports for the residents of the national capital.
“Although the lakes have been artificially created, they represent as essential a feature in the creation of the national capital as do well-planned streets and gardens and monumentally conceived architecture.”
According to Sir John Overall, “without it, Canberra would have been a failure”.
Indeed, Sir Robert told the crowd on that October day: "Wonder to yourselves what London would be like without the Thames or what Paris would be like without the Seine."
It’s certainly important to remember, too, that it is Canberra’s planned design that sets it apart and makes it unique - “a city unlike any other”.
While there are those who can remember when the lake named for the man who conceived it did not greet them at virtually every turn, could anyone truly suggest they can imagine a Canberra in which it wasn’t there to sparkle?
SOURCES:
Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow by John Overall.
Behind the Landscape of Lake Burely Griffin; A Thesis by Dianne F. Firth.
The Symbolic Role of the National Capital by David Headon.
http://lakeburleygriffinguardians.org.au/
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6174635/dark-side-of-the-lake/
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