The formation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 meant that a national capital had to be chosen and, because of the rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney, it was decided to create a new capital city rather than choose between the two favourites.
Later that decade an area of less than 2,500 square kilometres was excised from the state of New South Wales to create the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) with Canberra chosen as the name, taken from the Aboriginal word of Kamberra meaning “the meeting place”.
Canberra, which is also home to the Australian War Memorial and the Australian Institute of Sport, had existed before the creation of the ACT, though on a much smaller scale.
Europeans had first settled on the land in 1824, the first land grant at the base of the Black Mountains said to have been purchased by Joshua Moore. Twenty years later a town ‘Canberry’ had been formed.
It was not until the 20th century, though, that today’s city started to take shape. An international competition to design the new national capital was won by American architect Walter Burley Griffin and, although work began in 1913, it was a slow process with political wrangling and, significantly, the outbreak of World War I.
It was 1927 before Parliament sat for the first time in Canberra and development continued slowly amid the depression and World War II, until the formation of the National Capital Development Commission in 1958 saw it gather pace.
The next two decades saw landmarks such as the National Botanic Gardens and the National Library appear, while an 11 kilometre wide artificial lake – named Lake Burley Griffin after the city’s designer – was created and is now the centrepiece of Canberra.