The Godfather: Peter Corris on Canberra 50 years ago
I’ve been listening to memoirs by people who attended what Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister referred to as ‘both universities’ – that is, Oxford and Cambridge. Geoffrey Robertson, Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens have all made their marks and, in different degrees, paid tribute to their privileged Oxbridge educations.*
When we were Honours students at the University of Melbourne and aspiring academics, we were well aware of our teachers’ Oxbridge qualifications – their BLits, MLits, BPhils, DPhils and PhDs. They seemed to be required tickets and a first-class degree from Melbourne could guarantee some kind of scholarship to these august institutions. Not for me, however.
Although I was doing well in all subjects, but better in History than English, there was a scattering of second-class results (high seconds, mind) that made a first-class degree unlikely, and so it proved.
My path to an academic job had to be different. I got a well-praised MA by thesis from Monash and a scholarship to the ANU. The MA could have provided a way to a PhD at McGill University in Canada but, when I discovered that doctoral candidates had to demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language, I backed away.
So ANU it was, carrying none of the prestige of overseas universities but some cachet. It was not uncommon for Australians with Oxbridge bachelor degrees to top up with a doctorate from the ANU.
It sounds strange now, with Canberra so accessible by road and cheap flights and in the news every day, that 50 years ago the ACT had an almost exotic air – not exactly a foreign country but in some ways a place apart. Nestled inland and between hills, it was certainly different from the flatlands of Melbourne and the sparkling waters of Sydney.
The ANU wasn’t Oxford, Cambridge, the Ivy League or the LSE, but it had some of the elements of these. It didn’t have ancient colleges or the colleges of the Australian sandstone universities but halls of residence, more like the American pattern. And it did have University House, where some postgraduate students and staff lived and where you had an account that allowed you to drink from silver tankards in the bar and sign chits for the drinks – a touch of Oxbridge or Sandhurst. Half of the university was dedicated to postgraduates, something similar to the Harvard set-up and, if the National Library wasn’t quite the Bodleian or the British Museum, it was doing its best to become so with every book published in Australia supposed to be held there. Bicycles were common on campus, as in Oxbridge, but gowns were rarely seen, as in the US.
As a small city Canberra was liveable; most students and staff were from elsewhere, giving it a cosmopolitan air. Those so inclined could go to the snowfields in the winter and the south-coast beaches in the summer. Sydney, the sin city of our imagining (and sometimes in reality) wasn’t far away.
The Canberra CBD, with its main businesses being government and education, had a serious air. I gather that Canberra now is like everywhere else – traffic-choked at times, with drug-selling areas, awash with mobile phones and dumbed-down politics, radio and television. But 50 years ago it had a flavour, bland perhaps, but restful, with a drive-in movie theatre and scattered hamlets for picnicking and places to drink on Sundays when the capital was dry.
The ANU had attracted Australian luminaries in the humanities such as Manning Clark, Bob Gollan, Geoffrey Sawyer, AD Hope and international high-octane performers like Roger Keesing. I’m sure it was the same in the sciences.
I didn’t, and don’t, feel that, in going to Canberra and the ANU, I was in the second eleven … Well, perhaps just a little.
* The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry (2010); Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens (2010); Rather His Own Man by Geoffrey Robertson (2018).
Dear Peter, lovely to read your memories of life in Canberra 50 years ago. My dad got a job in 1957, when I was 6, at what became the ANU, and I have similar pleasant memories. The landscape surrounding Canberra is so beautiful, and it was such a pleasant place to ride a bike, even in winter – and we had people from all over the world at the university and from the foreign embassies, and immigrants from the Snowy Scheme, whose kids I went to school with. And so many gorgeous modern, and mostly modest houses too, including the one my parents built in Ferguson Crescent Deakin. Dad was a friend of Manning Clark’s, and I have wonderful memories of reading the Clark children’s collection of Hugh Lofting’s Dr Doolittle stories, perched on, as I recall, the steps leading up to Professor Clark’s study, with the two academics talking long and earnestly overhead. Dad was also friends with the man who ran the bookshop in Kingston, and I spent a lot of Friday evenings reading my way through his excellent collection of children’s books, while he and Dad chatted. I lived in Canberra again for a little while much later, as an older adult, and it is now as you describe – though still full of great people, and fabulous resources thanks to the presence of the national Parliament. When I was a kid I could take both my parents’ library cards and bike to the National Library – then in a smaller grey/black building on that road that goes up to Capitol Hill, near the Albert Hall – and the librarians would let me borrow from the adults’ and children’s sections. It was library heaven for an eleven-year-old constant reader. Thank you for reminding me of some very happy memories. Virginia Rose
Peter – taking account of all the ubeaut upbeat stuff Canberra now offers – your Canberra is better – except perhaps for the National Gallery and Museum.
My husband grew up in Canberra and told the story of how Ben Chifley’s phone number was similar to the local butcher. When people inadvertently got onto him he would take their order and pass it on to the butcher.
If that happened now there would probably be a major security scan and another row of razor wire installed to protect our national representatives.
Suzanne