Queen Elizabeth II and Canberra: the capital she saw grow through her reign

The monarch's 14 visits to Canberra marked the stages of the capital's growth. The first time the young monarch arrived here, there were more people to greet her than the ordinary number of residents.

The Queen presided over openings at buildings that have become landmarks and others which are staples in the beating life of a young, clever and optimistic city.

The Queen's parents, then the Duke and Duchess of York, left the very young princess behind when they came to Australia to open Parliament House, the gleaming white wedding cake in a sheep paddock, in May 1927.

From then on, the future prosperity of the capital of far-off Australia was in the future Queen's mind.

"I was certainly very young when my father and mother came here in 1927, but in later years I often heard them both say how much they had enjoyed their visit. Undoubtedly, they always followed with a keen and personal interest the growth of Australia's national capital," the Queen said in Canberra in February 1954.

"Canberra, built to a plan and set among beautiful scenery, will no doubt inspire imitators in many quarters, and it is certain than it will take an increasingly important place among the capitals of the world.

"My fervent wish is that your city may progress steadily towards its destiny, in a world of peace and aided by the prosperity of the Australian people."

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About 10,000 people lined the 12-mile stretch between Fairbairn and Government House when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrived on February 13, 1954. More than 40,000 people caught a glimpse of the Royal couple that Saturday, when there were only 28,000 people living in Canberra.

The Queen was the first - and so far, only - reigning monarch of Australia to set foot in the country.

"The crowds were so well behaved that, compared with other centres, enthusiasm was taken for restraint; but in the rain yesterday gatherings of 2000 to 3000 sprang as if from nowhere wherever there was a chance to see the Queen," The Canberra Times reported.

When the Queen addressed Parliament on that tour, she said it was a joy to address parliamentarians "not as a Queen from far away, but as your Queen and a part of your Parliament. In a real sense, you are here as my colleagues, friends and advisers".

"When I add to this consideration the fact that I am the first ruling sovereign to visit Australia, it is clear that the events of today make a piece of history which fills me with deep pride and the most heartfelt pleasure, and which I am confident will serve to strengthen in your hearts and minds a feeling of comradeship with the Crown and that sense of duty shared which we must all have as we confront our common tasks."

The Queen's connection with Australia's Parliament was an enduring one. In 1988, exactly 61 years after her father opened the provisional building, the Queen opened New Parliament House.

"It is as if all the other buildings of the great national institutions had been waiting for this, the greatest of them all, to take its rightful place as their centre and focus," the Queen said.

And she ought to know. The Queen had opened the Australian-American Memorial in Canberra in 1954, on her first tour, the National Carillon and the Captain James Cook Memorial on Lake Burley Griffin in April 1970, the brutalist High Court in May 1980 and the National Gallery in October 1982.

Though by the opening of New Parliament House, the times had changed since the Queen's first visit. Only 25,000 people turned out for the occasion, a quarter of the number expected by organisers.

The tenor, too, of the Queen's later visits changed. "Opposition figures were outraged yesterday that their leader, John Hewson, was not allowed to address the Queen's parliamentary reception - and that the speech of the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, was pro-republican," The Canberra Times reported on its front page on February 25, 1992.

"But the Prime Minister's office said the Queen herself had asked that speeches be kept to a minimum. ... In a low-key speech of welcome, Mr Keating noted that there had been a 'profound change' in the relationship of Britain and Australia since the Queen's first visit in 1954."

Little wonder, given Mr Keating led the Australian Labor Party, which had adopted republicanism as its official policy the year before.

The city had changed remarkably, too. On February 24, 1992, the Queen officially opened Bonython Primary School in Tuggeranong, the fast-growing district that was nothing but grazing land when she first addressed a crowd in Civic.

The Queen was escorted by the ACT's Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, another sign of changing times: Canberrans now governed themselves in a city that was for living in as well as matters of state.

But her fervent wish, expressed decades before, had been granted: Canberra was steadily progressing towards its destiny.

The Queen returned to the capital three more times, in 2000, 2006 and 2011.

"This country has made dramatic progress economically in social scientific and industrial endeavours and above all in self-confidence," the Queen told a reception at Parliament House held in her honour on her last visit.

The same could be said for the capital city that grew in peace and prosperity during her long reign.

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