Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00408:front:0:p173
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It declared that Melbourne would be the temporary home for the Federal Parliament and public servants until a new city was built at least 100 miles from Sydney. An
agreed territory of 903 square miles included the water catchment of the Cotter River and the river valley of the Molonglo for the setting for the city. The Department of Home Affairs commenced works for services and city planning. In 1910 the Secretary of the Federal Department of Home Affairs, David Miller requested permission of Minister O'Malley to conduct a design competition to elicit ideas for the city.
At the time the Federal Capital area was proclaimed, the river flats of the Molonglo, Mount Ainslie, Camp Hill and Kurrajong Hill had been extensively denuded of vegetation from a long period of clearing and grazing. Some exotic trees were established in parts of the area, around structures such as Blundell's cottage and St Johns Church and graveyard.

The Canberra Plan

Walter Burley Griffin won the competition for the design of Canberra in 1912. The plan was expressed in beautifully rendered illustrations prepared by Griffin's wife Marion Mahoney Griffin as plans, elevations and sections painted on silk.

The order of the city was for a great triangle aligned with the mountains which rose above the site. The triangle was to be defined by tree-lined avenues and spanned the central basin of an impounded lake. The triangle would consist of a series of terraces arranged in the functions of government and representing democracy. It was a synthesis of function and design where the Order of the Site (the natural environment) and the Order of Functions (the needs of the people) are perfectly integrated by specific geometry (Reid 2002). The Capitol was a main feature of the design

In terms of vistas, the Griffin vision was represented in two renderings drawn by Marion Mahony Griffin. In the rendering looking from Mt Ainslie towards the Capitol, the drama of the vista focuses on the Capitol, the building representing the aspirational forces in Australian national life, with the final termination in the mountains beyond. Below the Capitol, the Parliament House and the Government departments are terraced down to the Lake providing a symbol of a transparent democracy in action. The observer is standing at Mt Ainslie, a point representative of the power and influence of nature and the highest point of the vista. Griffin's plan for the ideal city, the philosophical triumvirate of humanity, democracy and nature is iconographed along the land axis which together with the water axis is the ordering geometry of the vista and the city. Griffin envisaged a dense city with a coming together of the population in a Casino (something akin to