When the National Museum of Australia finally opened its doors on Canberra’s Acton Peninsula in 2001, local radio invited callers to phone in with their impressions of the new building. Canberra radio has a shortage of shock jocks. Nor does it have many shrill jills. You can listen all day without hearing much venom in the clichés. Visitors are sometimes disappointed, and go home early to places where they have more chance of hearing callers say what everybody else is saying as though they’d just thought of it. They forget that Canberra has Parliament for this.
Callers about the museum were mixed in their reactions. One man said he had gone home without seeing anything because he couldn’t find the door to get in. He wondered if this was part of the architects’ plan to protect the collection. Others were miffed that the European history of Australia, representing one per cent of the human story of the continent, had only 60 or 70 per cent of the space in the museum. There soon followed a territorial battle which became a focal point for some of the contested issues of indigenous history. The most passionate callers had important things to say about the high price of souvenirs and sausage rolls.
One particular visitor, however, reported that she had had an eerie feeling when she was inside the new museum. She couldn’t put her finger on the cause. The woman said she was looking out the window from one of the galleries and had an uncanny sense of déjà vu. It was a brand new place but she knew she had been here before.
The reason dawned on her later. The museum is built on the site of the old Canberra Hospital. The woman realised she’d been looking at the same view over the lake that she had spent hours contemplating from bed as she recovered from the birth of her first child. The child was now an adult. Not a trace of the hospital remained. But the view was still the same. For one moment, she had felt she was a new mother again. The years in between fell away like skin.
This is how the museum works. It provides long vistas. People go there to see old stuff. But if the place has done its job, they come away with a fresh look at themselves.
This is certainly true of the