I wrote a Canberra Day post last year, which came out of my dismay at no longer enjoying the Sandgroper public holiday for my birthday now that I live in Canberra.
This year, we are celebrating Canberra Day on 8 March, which I realised is International Women’s Day – Votes for Women! – thus an excellent opportunity to reflect on the lives of two of the
many women involved in the creation of our federal capital: Lady Gertrude Mary Denman and Marion Mahony Griffin.
Lady Gertrude Mary Denman
I introduced you last year to the wonderful Lady Gertrude Mary Denman, the wife of Governor-General Lord Thomas Denman (1911-1914), who on 12 March 1913 – ‘Naming Day’, now known as Canberra Day – stood atop the newly completed base for a Federation column that was never realised and gave our new federal capital a name: ‘I name the capital of Australia, Canberra’.