OPH - Why this website?

Why this website?

They say that since the arrival of the Internet any frustrated writer and would-be graphic artist can now foist on an unsuspecting public all the previously-unpublished nonsense they choose. I must say that since my retirement from the Public Service in Canberra in 1996 I have enjoyed tremendously the opportunities that the Internet has presented: e-mail discussion groups, websites, newsgroups, etc. but hopefully I have not been foisting too much nonsense around.

It was probably only a matter of time before I turned to what has been a lifetime interest - Old Parliament House in Canberra. Parliament House has permeated my life. As a child I would drag out the black and white photographs of Canberra taken by my uncle, Richard Strangman, and study the scenes of Canberra which he printed as postcards for sale to the tourists. They included Kings Hall, the two Chambers, the Senate Gardens, the Speaker's Chair, and so on. Our collection of books in Lane Cove, Sydney, also included Warren Denning's "Inside Parliament", based on Denning's time as a journalist in the Press Gallery, which I occasionally took down from the shelves to read, even though I was too young to understand it.

When my uncle died in 1969 I was executor of his Estate and with the help of my late brother, Fr Bryan Strangman MSC, Richard's photographic collection was disposed of to the National Library of Australia. It included glass plates of early scenes of Tumut, where he and my father had been born and which almost became the National Capital, and many photographs of Canberra during its formative years. Paul Griffiths from Canberra has been studying Richard's work and believes he can identify a particular style which distinguishes his work from that of other commercial photographers in Canberra such as William James Mildenhall. There are 6,000 glass negatives and 13 albums in the National Library's Strangman collection which spans 1930-1960.

The agreement with the National Library stipulated that the photographs should always be attributed to Richard Strangman but that has tended to be forgotten during the years and often Richard's photographs are merely sourced as being "From the National Library of Australia" but in the following example from a current exhibition at OPH the curators have done the right thing.

Destined for Canberra

Brassey House (now called Brassey Hotel), Barton, where several of the MPs and staff stayed when visiting Canberra. The management kept a coffee urn on the boil for those returning from OPH at 1a.m. or 2 a.m. in the morning.

I suspect I was destined to end up in Canberra somehow. When I left school in 1959 I became involved in politics, not the major parties, but in the recently-formed Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and through its Federal Secretary, Jack Kane of Sydney, I was recommended in 1965 as a private secretary to former Queensland Premier Vince Gair in his new role as Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Democratic Labor Party (ADLP). I moved from Sydney to Brisbane and for the next nine years, when Parliament was meeting in Canberra, I would board the plane on Tuesday morning and fly to Canberra with the Queensland-based MHRs, Senators, Ministers and staff, and then return on the Friday morning, staying at Brassey House in Canberra. Kevin Cairns, Jim Killen, Ron Maunsell, Manfred Cross, Bill Hayden, Neville Bonner, Condon Byrne and Felix Dittmer, were some of the other passengers who boarded those 6.30 a.m. flights. Thirty times a year for nine years. I also travelled to many other places in Australia and all around Queensland.

With the DLP

The DLP Senate representation was destroyed at the 1974 Double Dissolution election which followed Senator Gair's acceptance of an Ambassador's post to Ireland which had been engineered by the late Senator Lionel Murphy who was Senate Leader in the ALP Government. For a short time prior to that episode Senator Frank McManus (Vic) was the new Parliamentary Leader of the ADLP and I worked on his staff. After staying in Melbourne during the remainder of 1974 I moved permanently to Canberra in 1975 and returned to the mainstream of the Public Service in the Department of the Special Minister of State in East Block. That building, which is only ten minutes walk from OPH, now incorporates a public exhibition area on the ground floor as part of the National Archives of Australia and is well worth a visit if you are coming to Canberra.

With Brian Harradine

At the 1975 Elections Brian Harradine from Tasmania was elected to the Senate as an Independent and I was recommended to him as someone who knew how Parliament worked. I was Senator Harradine's secretary, based in Parliament House, for sixteen years from 1975 until 1992 and transferred with him from Old Parliament House to the new building in 1988. In 1992 I again returned to the Public Service, this time to the Department of Administratrive Services (DAS) in Alinga Street and in 1996 "took a package". My time in DAS coincided with the explosive growth of the Internet and while there I established a very successful Internet discussion group on public sector management (PUBSEC) which, at its height, brought together 650 public servants from more than 20 countries.

In 1998 I joined the group of volunteers who act as a guides at Old Parliament House, a growing number of these having worked there, and once a fortnight I take my place in Kings Hall ready to show visitors around the public areas of the building.

If there is anyone visiting this site who has a story or a memory to share about OPH do not hesitate to contact me: string@hotkey.net.au I have placed some of these communications in a section called Stories.

I hope that you will now join me on an entirely subjective guided tour - via the Internet - of some of the interesting things to see at OPH.

Denis Strangman, Canberra

This will take you to the Contents Page which lists the completed areas of this website. Please return soon as other areas are being added regularly.

This page is part of the Unofficial Website for Old Parliament House, Canberra, which is maintained by Denis Strangman. This is a link to the official website for Old Parliament House.

Visitors to this page since 3 April 2000: