Canberra’s Girl Guides celebrate their 95th birthday this year; they started in 1927 and were there for the opening of Parliament House. Now, Heritage Grants from the ACT Government have made it possible to tell their history – and this city’s.
The Canberra Girl Guides’ Association received two grants in 2018–19, archivist Fiona Langford explained, to create a conservation management plan and to record the oral histories of four former Guides in their seventies and eighties. A second grant last year will preserve the memories of five more women.
“To those of us interested in local history, the grants have made a big difference,” Ms Langford said.
The Guides had “a whole stack of boxes” at their Yarralumla Hall. “We knew that they had something in them. We didn’t know what they were. We didn’t know how they were connected to guiding.”
Now, after some archival training, they know how to preserve their paper records and old uniforms.
“We determine what is still useful to look at, to read, to be a source of history for our organisation, to be a source of history for somebody else, and we work out how to keep it and where to keep it.”
Here, for instance, are names from Canberra’s early history like Pattie Tillyard (a community leader and ‘grande dame’ of Canberra, after whom Tillyard Drive is named), or philanthropist Mrs. C.S. Daley, the first commissioner of the Canberra Girl Guides.
The Guides held their first display of old uniforms at last year’s Heritage Festival and will display more at the 2022 festival next month. Highlights include a guide’s dress, gauntlets, and bloomers from the 1930s. “Amazing how it’s survived; it’s a very solid material.”
As a result of last year’s display, one ex-Guide donated her uniform (and her mother’s) – which has a royal connection. The late Duke of Edinburgh patted her head, and her yellow Brownie cap, when he and the Queen visited Victoria on their first tour of Australia in 1954.
There are also dolls (and a teddy bear) kitted out in Guide and Brownie uniforms from the 1950s to the present day.
“It was quite a normal thing to dress your doll in something that you would wear,” Ms Langford said.
Four women have recounted their memories of the Guides to a qualified historian, spanning the 1940s to the 1980s, and five more are in the pipeline.
“They’re fascinating, not just for Guide people, but for anyone interested in Canberra’s growth,” Ms Langford said. “They have strong connections to the history of Canberra – where some of them went to school, why they came to Canberra in the first instance, where they worked.”
One was Lady Lois Hicks (née Swindon), widow of a High Commissioner to New Zealand; she was a Guide in Canberra in the early 1940s, went to Ainslie Primary School and Canberra High School, worked as a nurse, and remained in the Guides throughout her time.
“There was a lot of early Canberra history in her story,” Ms Langford said.
Anne Cain, Val Stanwyck, and Marcia Barnard (the first Queen’s Guide in Canberra) were Guides from the 1950s to the 1970s.
“They came to Canberra from somewhere else, as most people did in those years; that’s when the big push to increase the public service in Canberra came,” Ms Langford said. “And so, you hear their stories about living in Canberra for a little while, then moving overseas on some posting or other, returning to Canberra, bringing up their children, and being a guide leader at wherever.”
The first recordings are in the ACT Heritage Library collection.
The Guides have been a very useful organisation for 95 years, Ms Langford believes.
“Not only is it an activity for fun for girls, there’s a lot of service that we do for other people.”
During the Second World War, the Guides knitted scarves and socks for the troops, and collected scrap metal, which was sold to raise funds, or recycled to be made into something else. During the Vietnam War, they sent calendars they made to soldiers. When the Indian Ocean tsunami hit Asia in 2004, the Guides raised money. Now, they are helping the Lismore and Kyogle Guide halls recover from flooding.
That, Ms Langford said, is in addition to going camping, hiking, canoeing, rock climbing, and other activities girls find fun.
The Guides had a very strong presence in Canberra until the 1980s. “But Scouts and Guides are no longer the activity of choice for most people,” Ms Lanford said, regretfully.
“Although our numbers have remained the same for the last 20 years, we haven’t really increased our numbers with the population increase. That’s a bit sad, but it’s also a reflection on the community changing.”
The Girl Guides have several groups in the ACT and surrounding region. More information can be found on the Guides’ website.
The Guides’ oral history project was made possible by the ACT Heritage Grants, which identify, conserve, and celebrate Canberra’s history and heritage, said Rebecca Vassarotti, ACT Minister for Heritage.
This year’s round will provide $350,850 for local community projects. Ms Vassarotti hopes to see applications that document and record the histories of Canberra’s women, First Nation, multicultural, disability, and LGBTQIA+ communities. Applications close 29 April.
