At Canberra

Dwellers on the world's flattest continent prepared excitedly last week for a great moment now imminent in their history, the opening of a capital city closely patterned on, but designed to eclipse, Washington, D. C. On a high plateau, equidistant between Sydney and Melbourne, the new capital of Australia has risen, after six years of labor by 3,000 men and more than a decade of intensive planning. Australians, who number less than six million, pronounced last week, with a sense of awful achievement the name of their new Federal Capital, "CANBERRA."

Bounding kangaroos and the not yet forgotten dulcet voice of aging Dame Nellie Melba are all that "Australia" calls up in many a mind. Humans under 30 seldom consciously associate "Peach Melba" or "Toast Melba" (very thin, very brown) with the great one time singer who is the only world-famed Australian.*

When Canberra became live news last week on the eve of its emergence as a great capital, many a sterling U. S. citizen felt acute shame at ignorance of almost everything about Australia except its rank as a British Dominion and its position in the Southern Hemisphere.

On an area larger than that of the Continental U. S. thrive approximately enough white Australians to populate New York City, and barely sufficient full-blooded aboriginal Australians (copper-colored) to equal the civic roster of Little Rock, Ark. (65,000).

The average Australian male earns $22 a week (as against $30 in the U. S.); and Australians spent over $500 each to put 329,883 men into the World War. Some 300,000 of these suffered casualties, over 50,000 being killed. But even with this vicious drain on her man power and exchequer, Australia has emerged from the War strong and quickening. year and a half ago she weathered a great shipping strike, and through all these growing pains and tribulations has resolutely pushed forward the great project of Canberra.

Just as the original 13 American United States grew so mutually jealous that in 1790 it was necessary to set aside the District of Columbia; so, in 1911, the Dominion Parliament of Australia created the Federal Territory of Canberra, because the six Australian states* could not abide that Melbourne, Victoria, should continue indefinitely Australia's capital.

Prizes of $8,500, $3,600 and $2,400 were offered for a city plan which should make Canberra the world's finest seat of Government; and he who won $8,500 was a young scion of Maywood, Illinois, U. S. A., now famed Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin.

Shrewd, Mr. Griffin called the attention of Australians to the major defect of Washington, D. C. The city, as originally planned, was to have expanded in concentric rings about the Capitol. But what has happened? Washington has grown so disproportionately westward that the Capitol now clings to the city's eastward fringe. A development so lopsided and undignified, decided Australians, shall not recur at Canberra.

To guarantee the symmetrical growth of Canberra not a square inch of ground will be sold for 99 years. During that period three Federal commissioners have absolute discretion as to the rental of land on 99-year leases, rents to be re-appraised every decade. Moreover the Commissioners must approve the plans of every structure in Canberra before it can be erected. They will approve no tenements, no stores or factories in residential districts; no buildings of a height, size or type which does not fit into the city plan. For 99 years Canberra will be the only state-owned capital in the world.

Last week, on the broad Canberra plain, the new Parliament House stood completed, smelling strongly of fresh paint and plaster. Teeming were the Canberra Hotel ("finest in the Southern Hemisphere"), the Ainslee, the Kurrajong, the Acton Hotel, and the three large boarding hotels which the Government has erected for civil servants until their cottages and houses are finished.

Upon these hotels workmen were plastering furiously last week, tacking shingles like a swarm of mad woodpeckers. Some two score homes stood finished, furnished and occupied; but civil servants mostly slept at hotels after their 429-mile trip from Melbourne. Like barnyard fowls unused to migrating, which have suddenly been shooed from one coop into another, the employes of the Commonwealth of Australia were cackling many a minor protest last week; but the approach of a royal personage stilled all complaints.

It was George V, King and Emperor, who inaugurated the Australian Commonwealth two decades and a half ago when he was Duke of York. It was Edward, Prince of Wales, who laid the cornerstone of the Capitol Building at Canberra six years ago. This month it is Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George, Duke of York, who has arrived with his Duchess in Australia after a tour of New Zealand (TIME, March 21, 28), to open the new Australian Parliament....

His Royal Highness, if the imperial schedule is not disturbed, will arrive at the Parliament Building on May 9 in one of the ten British Crossley cars at his official disposal in Australia. Before an assembled throng he will stand with Dame Nellie Melba, 68, "greatest Australian," who will lead a mighty singing of "God Save the King." Soon the Duke will step within, open Parliament, signalize that the world has a new Great Capital.

Helen Porter Mitchell (Melba) born in 1859, made her first public appearance at six years of age at a school concert, when she sang "Comin 'Thro' the Rye" to a delighted audience. She received a good musical education, mostly at the piano; married when 23 one Captain Charles Armstrong, and sang and played at private musical soirees in Melbourne. But, because of some prejudice against her early marriage to a well-to-do man, the Australian public ranked her "an amateur." So she departed for Paris in 1884, trained her voice-- and studied hard--under the famed Mme. Marchesi, adopted the name of Melba, hastily derived from Melbourne. She made her debut in Brussels in 1887, as "Gilda" in Verdi's Rigoletto and in Covent Garden (London) in 1888, when she sang the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor, which always remained her favorite role. In 1893, she appeared at La Scala, Milan, and made her first visit to the U. S. Then began her brilliant career; her "liquid voice" became known in every opera house in the world, in Germany, Austria, Spain, England, Holland, France. She made many a visit to the U. S.

*Naturally tennis enthusiasts know Norman E. Brookes and Gerald L. Patterson, and golf devotees know Joseph Kirkwood, trick-shot man, etc., etc.; but the fame of these Australians is localized to the milieu in which they excel; and not a single Australian World War figure is world known.

*Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia.