Day 10

My daily walk usually takes me through Commonwealth Park, following one of the numerous paths around the ponds and gardens. In Griffin’s original plan for Canberra a recreation area was allocated to the north of the lake and in his 1918 plan included an “aquarium pond” giving precedence to today’s Nerang Pool. Over the years various landscapers have been involved in the construction of the park, though it’s current form was strongly influenced by British landscape designer Dame Sylvia Crowe in 1964. During my walk I was curious about a cluster of older trees and pleased to find a plaque, confirming my suspicions: a house once stood on the location. The site was once part of Glebe Farm, first leased in 1842, and in 1874 the then lease holder, Ebenezer Booth, built a roughcast whitewashed brick house with a high shingles roof. In 1909 John Murray and his family moved from Cowra Creek (near Bredbo) and leased 75-acres along the Molonglo River, including the house. Murray was a builder and intended to gain a job with the establishment of the new Federal Capital. However he soon learnt construction would be undertaken by builders from Melbourne, Sydney and abroad, so he turned his attention to gardening and started selling produce to the Queanbeyan green grocer. Identifying the need for a bakery in Canberra Murray built a kitchen and weatherboard bake house and opened Canberra’s first bakery, soon after adding a small grocery store. In 1923, after 14 years of trade, a fire broke out and destroyed the buildings. The shell of the bakery still stood till the 1960s and was sketched by Eitene Mort in 1926, published in her “Old Canberra: A Sketchbook of the 1920s” (pictured). Murray died in 1933 and his obituary - “Canberra Pioneer” - detailed how he “…established the first business in Canberra in the Glebe lands adjacent to St. John’s Church [in] about the year 1900…” and built the first building in Canberra for the Commonwealth - the Surveyor's Hut: “…the building was a shed for the housing of the surveyor’s plans and records and still stands on the site known as Surveyor’s Gully, near the west block of Commonwealth offices.” (The Canberra Times 03/08/33).

Mort, Eirene. (1926). Murray's Bakery built by E. G. Booth, Canberra, 16 November 1926. National Library of Australia.