A CITY OF CURVES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20259, 20 May 1929, Page 13

A CITY OF CURVES.

LAYOUT OF CANBERRA.

STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES.

THE HIGH COST OF LIVING. An embryo city, situated in a glorious valley, populated very largely by civil servants., and with its streets all laid in curving lines to avoid tin harshness of the conventional square blocks, are some of the impressions of Canberra, the Federal capital, brought back to .Auckland by Mr. Harvey Turner after a recent visit to Australia.

"If money continues to be spent there on the present scale. Canberra will become a remarkable city in miniature," said Mr. Turner. "It is situated in a glorious valley bounded by distant hills, with occasional eminences on the floor of tho -valley itself. It is on one of these lesser hills in the city area that it : s proposed, in, perhaps, 50 years' time, to build the permanent home of the Federal Parliament of Australia. The visitor being shown round tho present Parliamentary buildings is told that this pile, larger, but not so fine architecturally, as New Zealand's Parliamentary Buildings, is merely 'temporary,' although the structure has cost £1,000,000." One of the most striking indoor features was the rubber flooring, of which some miles of strips were used. The general plan was to dissociate from the actual House of Parliament all Ministerial oflices and everything else which might be considered a distraction to the working of tho legislative mind. All departmental and Ministerial offices, therefore, were separately housed. Even the "copy" of Hansard reporters was sent away every few minutes a distance of two miles through air. tubes to the building where copies were typed out for immediate return to the House.

Everywhere in Canberra was the same impression of great distances from point to point. Thus the leading hotel aud the nearest bank were separated by two miles, to be covered by one ol the Governmentowned motor-buses, or by one of the very few taxis plying for hire in this capital of widely-spaced buildings. There were no straight, streets, and therefore no right angle intersections, the latest ideas of town planning upon which Canberra had been laid out being to build a city of harmonising curves. The metal surfaced roads, therefore, "waved" from point to point, ibut there were yet too ,few buildings, in spite of a population of about 8000, to form an accurate idea of what the effect would be in a fully built city.

All the hotels were State-owned, including one reserved entirely for the use of members of the Federal Parliament and which was closed between sessions. There was the usual variation in tariffs, but the cost of living anywhere in Canberra was very high, so remote was the capital from centres of supply.