The Lyttleton Times of 15 November 1907 reported that:
The question of the federalisation of Australian educational systems has been raised again by a motion, notice of which has been given in the Commonwealth House of Representatives by Mr C. Fraser, M.P. The publication of Mr Fraser’s proposal caused a number of members to express a doubt as to whether the Commonwealth Parliament can legislate in the sphere of education at all. The Attorney-General, however, has no doubt as to the competency of the Federation to deal with university education to the extent of founding a national university and maintaining a bureau of education. With reference to military and naval colleges, there is no room for argument. The Federation can maintain these. The Commonwealth Attorney-General thinks that the idea of an Australian National University is likely to be realised much sooner than some critics of Federal aspirations expect.
At this point, there were universities in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Tasmania.
Australia had been a single federal political entity only since 1901, government previously having been via six separate colonies (New South Wales, Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania). The already-extant universities had been established by the individual colonial parliaments, and the question was whether the federal government could do the same.
Canberra was agreed as the site of the nation’s capital in 1908, and it seems that the plans for the capital included space for a university. But it didn’t happen until 1946, when the Australian National University Act was passed by the Australian parliament.
Now I say that, but I do need at this point to mention Canberra University College. This had been established in 1929 as a loose collaboration between Melbourne University and the federal government. It operated at first as an evening, part-time institution, serving mostly civil servants, and was, as the name suggests, based in Canberra. When the Australian National University (ANU) was established the act explicitly stated that the “University may provide for the incorporation in the University of the Canberra University College.”
But it didn’t do so straight away.
The university as established in 1946 was a postgraduate research institution, with four schools: the School of Medical Research, known as “The John Curtin School of Medical Researc;” a Research School of Physical Sciences; a Research School of Social Sciences; and a Research School of Pacific Studies. The university’s own history focuses initially on the development of the Observatory at Mount Stromlo, which had formally opened in 1924 as the Commonwealth’s solar observatory.
During the second world war the observatory became a factory for gun sights, and in 1944 the focus changed from solar to stellar observation (from the sun to other stars).
At this time impetus was gaining for the establishment of a national university. The university’s own history identifies three major figures: Alf Conlon, H C “Nugget” Coombs, and Douglas “Pansy” Wright. Conlon was the director of research and civil affairs for the Australian army, and had previously been “manpower” officer at Sydney University. Coombs was a future Governor of the Australian reserve bank, and a distinguished economist and civil servant. (And who, incidentally, got his first post at the bank because Mary Willmott Debenham had had to resign in 1935, in line with the bank’s then policies, when she got married.) And finally Wright was Professor of Physiology at Melbourne University. His nickname, apparently, came from the name of a character he played in a revue whilst at university.
Their energy and efforts led to the establishment of the university, and an advisory committee comprising Australian academics who had been based overseas – including Sir Howard Florey (who led the team and learned how to manufacture penicillin at scale), W K Hancock (a distinguished historian), Mark Oliphant (physicist and one of the leading scientists on the Manhattan Project in the US, to create the atomic bomb) and Raymond Firth (an anthropologist of great standing) – steered its development.
The university’s first buildings began to be erected from 1950 onwards, and the first academic staff were appointed at the same time. Gradually the university begin to take shape. A fire at the observatory in 1952 damaged some of the buildings and equipment, and in 1955 new telescopes – including a giant 74” reflecting telescope – were installed. The observatory became formally part of the university in 1957 and then in 1960, Canberra University College was incorporated into the university, as an undergraduate school.
By 1962 the lights from Canberra city reduced the usefulness of the Mount Stromlo observatory, and a new site – Siding Spring, about 150 miles north of the university – was chosen to replace it.
In 1964 the university appointed its first woman professor – Hanna Neumann, a mathematician whose career spanned Germany (which she left in 1938 with the rise of the Nazis), the UK, and Australia.
The Australian Forestry School became part of the university in 1965, and the university continued to grow and develop. Over the years new research institutes and faculties were added; natural disasters (fires, hailstorm) damaged parts of the university, which were then restored; and a Nobel prize was awarded to Brian Schmidt, astrophysicist and later vice-chancellor.
More recently, the university has been subject to allegations of bullying, within its college of health and medicine and also within humanities.
Here’s a free, online, jigsaw of the postcard, which I hope you enjoy.
