Canberra: Capitol of Australia II

PermalinkToday's AMIT

Lead: The site chosen for its new capital chosen, Australia turned to an international competition to choose the designer. The winner was an American of the Prairie School of Architecture, Walter Burley Griffin.

 Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Walter Griffin was considered part of the Prairie School of Architecture, the most prominent proponent of which was Frank Lloyd Wright, who employed Griffin for several years after 1901. Functional, of economic design, and unpretentious, Prairie School Houses were designed to fit into their surroundings. In 1912, Griffin was selected to design the new capitol of Australia southwest of Sydney.

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Canberra: Capitol of Australia I

PermalinkToday's AMIT

Lead: With the coming of the Australian Federation in 1901, the new constitution required the establishment of a capitol. Not Sydney, not Melbourne, but an entirely new seat of government.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Prior to 1900 the continent of Australia was divided between six separate European colonies: New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland, Western Australia and Southern Australia. In the debates leading to Federation, regional rivalries were so intense, particularly between Sydney and Melbourne, that  the price for agreement was a new capitol, in New South Wales, but at least 100 miles from Sydney.

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Australian Gold Rush

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: On January 20, 1788, six transports delivered 750 convicts to Botany Bay. Sixty-five years and 168,000 prisoners later, the practice of deportation to New South Wales was abruptly terminated.

Intro.: "A Moment in Time" with Dan Roberts.

Content: In January, 1851 Edward Hargraves returned to Sydney, Australia. He had spent some time in the Gold Fields during the first years after its discovery in California. This reminded him of similar geological formations he had noted in territory along the Macquarie River northwest of Sydney two decades before.

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Convicts Arrive at Botany Bay I

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: The prisons of England were just too crowded: something had to be done.

Intro.: "A Moment in Time" with Dan Roberts.

Content: To solve the problem of a growing prison population in England, the government began in 1718 to deport or transport prisoners to the colonies in the American South. They were sold to shipping contractors who would sell them to plantation owners as workers on the coastal estates. This method of transportation ended with the coming of the American Revolution and the population of the prisons began to creep back up.

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Nellie Melba

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: Australia has a rich history of cultural icons: Phar-Lap the indefatigable race horse; Ned Kelly, the iron clad bank robber; yet none surpass the impact of opera singer and early 20th century material girl, Nellie Melba.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Born in 1861 of musically inclined Scottish immigrant parents in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, Nellie Melba performed in her first singing concert at the age of six, and began professional training in 1880. Though she was developing into a powerful coloratura soprano, Australia was far from the center of the operatic universe. If she was to succeed in that world, she would have to go to Europe. In 1886 she auditioned for and was received as a student of the mezzo-soprano Parisian vocal master, Madame Mathilda Marchesi. Marchezi recognized a unique talent, trained her for six months, and then, using her connections, opened the doors. Possessed of her father’s confidence, Melba strode onto the stage at Theatre de la Monnai in Brussels in October 1887 and never looked back. Her intense soprano with its icily brilliant, trill vibrato grabbed the imagination of the opera world and soon she was playing to packed houses in London, Paris, St. Petersburg, New York and, eventually even Italians embraced Nellie.

 

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Australia’s Gold Rush

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: On January 20, 1788, six transports delivered 750 convicts to Botany Bay. Sixty-five years and 168,000 prisoners later, the practice of deportation to New South Wales was abruptly terminated.

Intro.: "A Moment in Time" with Dan Roberts.

Content: In January, 1851 Edward Hargraves returned to Sydney, Australia. He had spent some time in the Gold Fields during the first years after its discovery in California. This reminded him of similar geological formations he had noted in territory along the Macquarie River northwest of Sydney two decades before.

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Phar Lap

PermalinkToday's AMIT
Lead: Despite a heroic past, Australia is a nation with few real national heroes. Few would deny, however, that one of them was a big, red horse named Phar Lap.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: In his youth, Phar Lap, whose name in Thai is the word for “lightning,” did not seem a likely prospect for heroic status. The gelding was born in Timaru, New Zealand in 1926, bought for about $336 and arrived in Australia, painfully thin, with warts all over his face, and lacking very much elemental grace. His trainer, Harry Telford, however, believed he had the makings of champion. Phar Lap was of large sturdy construction and later was found to have an enormous heart of near freakish size. He could sprint and also hang in there for the distance. Around the stable the horse was known as Bobby, and there he met his soon-to-be inseparable companion, stableboy Tommy Woodcock.

 

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The Australian Gold Rush

PermalinkToday's AMIT
Lead: On January 20, 1788, six transports delivered 750 convicts to Botany Bay. Sixty-five years and 168,000 prisoners later the practice of deportation to New South Wales was abruptly terminated.

Tag: "A Moment in Time" with Dan Roberts.

Content: In January, 1851 Edward Hargraves returned to Sydney, Australia. He had spent some time in the Gold Fields during the first years after its discovery in California. This reminded him of similar geological formations he had noted in territory along the Macquarie River northwest of Sydney two decades before.

 

Read more →