While the front garden is elegant and formal, as fitting for such a family home, the back garden is practical. It is a productive space with orchards, and a chicken coop.

Harry made places to play and for the girls to have fun, but he also built an air-raid shelter here.

As news arrived in 1942 of bombing raids on Darwin and Broome, and submarine attacks on Sydney Harbour, the people of Canberra felt exposed. Harry’s Gallipoli experience more than 25 years before was enough for him to want to protect his family. He became the local Air Raid Warden, and arranged for an air raid shelter to be carved out of the ground at the very rear of the property. Very few shelters were made in Canberra, and even fewer have survived. Harry’s air raid shelter was well built and has been restored as it existed at the time, although today it is more likely to house a snake than a family sheltering from bombs. 

The Cubby House was the girl’s own domain, where they were left to their own devices; a favourite place for play, and to stretch growing imaginations, where the dolls and toys came to life. Dawn invited her mother to lunch in the Cubby one day; a potato cooked on their own real working stove. The girls knew how to safely add the fuel and light it, to keep themselves warm.

The hut itself was one of many thousands that were used to house the workmen constructing Canberra, each of which were sold off once Parliament House was built and opened in 1927.

The large double garage, to house two cars, was once well beyond the reach of most families, but today it makes the perfect place to start and finish your journey through this unique family home.  Let us tell you about two other extraordinary historic properties in the Canberra region that pre-date the Federal Capital.