Just as legislation must pass through both houses of parliament, so too do renovations – and the House of Representatives at Old Parliament House is undergoing its first major upgrade in 100 years.
It follows the major maintenance works at the Senate in 2020, and in the process of stripping back 25 layers of paint and installing double-glazing to look like the old sand-blasted windows, interesting stories have come out of the woodwork, so to speak.
The last time Old Parliament House was in three levels of scaffolding was when it was constructed in 1923, at a time when construction workers wore tweed vests instead of high-vis vests.
Expert trades and conservators have been tasked with the job, discovering some faults/cracks in the architecture and finding long hidden beams and old window frames with workers’ handwriting scrawled on them.
The 12 original windows near the ceiling have been covered up since the 1970s, so specialist glaziers are repairing the timber frames and matching UV-protection glass to the original windows to protect the furniture fabrics below. Even the brass door handles are receiving expert treatment.
Perhaps the most interesting artefacts are old newspapers discovered onsite, dating back to a time when news pages were turned, not swiped. Century-old cigarette butts have also been found between brick walls and rendering, from a time when smoko meant exactly that.
A Museum of Australian Democracy spokesperson says building techniques and tools have changed (renderers no longer use plaster with horse hair but rather plaster with fibreglass) and much research was needed to “ensure we’re not introducing a new element that will impair the existing elements’.
“One of the renderers has been doing rending work on Parliament House for 12 years and he says we will not get to do this again in our lifetime – to see this building stripped back to find these stories,” the spokesperson says.
Old Parliament House took three years to build at a cost of £644,500 – almost three times the original estimate. The current renovation, to be completed by the end of 2023, will cost $2.2 million. Over the 61 years from 1927 to 1988, Old Parliament House witnessed seven changes of government and 16 prime ministers (almost matching the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era).
The old Press Gallery is also about to receive the same overhaul treatment at the end of this month, stripping back the walls to just bricks and mortar, to search for possible “leaks”. If only those walls could talk.
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