Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00620:body:0:p16
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00620
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Character Range: 43310–46237

and the House of Representatives clearly expressed to east and west of the building mass.  Ornamental ponds extended along the balance of the Land Axis to the lake, giving Parliament House a degree of prominence in the city (Figure 6).  Capitol Hill (Mount Kurrajong) was terminus of the ensemble, with accommodation for the Governor-General and the Prime Minister either side of a central administration building.[13]
Figure 5 The Government Group: detail of the Griffin's competition entry, 1911
Source: National Library of Australia, NAA A710, 38
Figure 6 View looking south along the Land Axis from Mount Ainslie, rendering by Marion Mahony Griffin for the 1911 competition
Source: National Archives of Australia, NAA A710 49

2.3                    Early planning for Canberra (1912-1925)
Between 1912 and 1925, when the layout of the city of Canberra and its environs was gazetted, the plan for the federal capital was the subject of numerous modifications and revisions.  The first of these, in November 1912, was a plan prepared by the Departmental Board, a body charged with implementing the city structure (Figure 7).  The Board's plan, which was approved in 1913, retained Griffin's Land Axis and the axial siting of Parliament house, but generally incorporated very little of Griffin's scheme, which was deemed extravagant, costly and impractical.
The first peg of the city was driven on 20 February 1913, six months before the Griffins arrived in Australia (18 August 1913), at the invitation of William Kelly who followed King O'Malley as minister responsible for the national capital following a change of government.
Figure 7 The Departmental Board plan for Canberra, 1912 (part)
Source: National Archives of Australia, NAA A767 1

2.3.1               Walter Burley Griffin, Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction (1913-20)
On 26 August 1913, the Departmental Board met with Walter Burley Griffin in Melbourne and expressed a number of fundamental concerns about the proposal, including its scale and siting.[14]  Griffin revised his scheme later that year, seeking to address a number of the matters raised by the Board, but the distance between the architect's vision and that proposed by the government officials remained significant.  The working relationship between the two was also increasingly dysfunctional.  Forced to choose between the two, Minister Kelly disbanded the Board in October 1913 and appointed Griffin as Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction on a three-year contract (the contract eventually expired at the end of 1920).  Also in 1913, Kelly revoked the approval of the Board plan and formally sanctioned support for Griffin's revised plan.  As noted by heritage consultant Duncan Marshall:
This plan now became the basic planning document, informing all of the Griffins' later revisions, including the final version of the design prepared in 1918.  The final