One of the most common questions to land in my inbox is just how many Canberra bus shelters are lurking in enemy territory beyond our borders.
I guess this high level of interest is as much a reflection of our love for the brutalist concrete bunker-style shelters as it is for our sense of identity. Well, at least since 1975, when, after being commissioned by the National Capital Development Commission, about 500 Clem Cummings-designed bus shelters started to pop up around the city.
Let's face it. Apart from the black puffer jacket and the site of a pile-up on the Parkway, nothing screams Canberra more than these iconic shelters. Yes, even with the windows missing. The popularity of the eclectic range of bus stop merchandise available at Canberra gift shops - from puzzles to socks - is testimony to this. One Canberra man even sports a stylised tattoo of a Clem Cummings shelter on his arm. Really.
"They are awesome, and a bigger part of Canberra's history than most realise," says regular reader of this column, Steve Ulrich. "They represent a Canberra before self-government, and a simpler time". Indeed.
Spotting one further afield is a bit like bumping into a fellow Aussie in a far-flung place. It makes you feel warm and fuzzy.
This column has previously reported on a range of non-traditional uses for the shelters, from Canberraphiles posing for their wedding photos in front of a Cummings original to using one as a prop in a skateboard trick. Of course, their fame has spread further with the freshly painted shelter on King George Terrace featuring in the ABC's new TV comedy Austin.
So, just where are they lurking outside the ACT?
Among the best-known is the one on the corner of Molonglo River Drive and Captains Flat Road at Carwoola, erected by a local man in the 1990s for kids from the nearby housing estate to shelter in while waiting for the school bus.
There are several, as you'd expect due to its proximity, in Queanbeyan as well as shelters as far afield as Dubbo and the Gold Coast, where two are used as a public toilet facility. Some may suggest in certain parts of Canberra they are unofficially used for the same purpose. There are also two on Sydney's northern beaches, one on Wakehurst Parkway, and one near the intersection of Haigh Avenue and Pringle Avenue, both still used for their original purpose.
More intriguingly at various times in the last 50 years they've also been spotted at NSW railway stations, including one at Burradoo (between Moss Vale and Bowral), and others in the Hunter region of NSW at Maitland, Tarro, Aberdeen and Sandgate as well as Wondabyne and Warnervale on the Central Coast. Closer to home, there also used to be shelters at the long-abandoned Bredbo railway station.
"Unfortunately, the origins of these 'railway' shelters can't be readily traced, however the thought is that they were purchased 'off the shelf', perhaps from the same manufacturer as the Canberra bus shelters'," reports Transport Asset Holding Entity NSW community assets manager Andrew Killingsworth.
Of the railway orphans, Tallong (between Goulburn and Bundanoon) is my favourite, mainly because when it was first erected in 1994 it was behind a low wire fence which prompted some locals to comically speculate that it was to prevent vandalism.
However, the biggest cluster of 'Canberra' bus shelters found outside their normal domain is in Goulburn.
The Goulburn Mulwaree Library recently took a deep dive into their history and in a report titled Brutalist Bus Shelters of Goulburn, reported that "as of 2024, there are a total of seven brutalists shelters of a similar design in Goulburn".
The shelter on the corner of Kinghorne and Victoria streets isn't even the first one to grace that intersection.
"As the first one was destroyed by a car accident in May 1992, the driver was ordered by Goulburn City Council to pay the replacement cost of the shelter, which they would presumably be buying directly from the manufacturer."
Of the seven in Goulburn, the report states "five of these are the Canberra Clem Cummings design while two are distinctly not - a unique mystery just for Goulburn."
The two, one located on Sydney Road near its intersection with Gorman Road, and the other within a retirement village on Apex Circuit, are a bit of an oddity.
"Compared to Cummings' design they have thinner walls and are rather more squat. The Sydney Road shelter is especially perplexing with its sharp, angular windows."
If you look closely, these cheaper versions resemble an upside-down concrete tank with a few holes hacked into the side. That's because that's exactly what they are. According to the report, they were made circa 1977-78 by a Goulburn tank manufacturer with no known connection to Clem Cummings or Melocco, the Queanbeyan manufacturer of Canberra's bus shelters.
Arguably the biggest mystery about the Goulburn shelters isn't these two imposters, rather the fact that all five of the genuine Goulburn Clem Cummings shelters have their side "Lexan" polycarbonate windows intact. Something I don't think any in the national capital can still boast. Following constant vandalism, the ACT government stopped replacing the windows many years ago - another reason to hit the Federal and Hume highways for a bus shelter crawl around Goulburn. Go on, you know you want to.
'It seemed like a good idea at the time'
Accounts of people riding horses into pubs continue to fill my inbox.
Although she has been unable to dig up any photos, Bev Murray reports that back in the 1980s, Bombala character Bruce Niven, nicknamed Borneo, would regularly ride his horse into the town's Globe Hotel, which has since burned down.
Meanwhile, Buck of Bungendore recalls the day he rode his horse into the outback pub of Garah, about 60 kilometres north of Moree. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," recalls Bruce, "however, the publican wasn't happy because the horse dropped several litres of urine on the floor". Heck.
"Needless to say, I have never had a drink of rum since that day," muses Buck, who has a word of warning for any would-be copycats. "Beware of ceiling fans in pubs as you don't want to be the origins of a headless horseman story.". Ouch.
Murray Williamson of Bruce recalls his own horsey tale while ordering a counter lunch at a small roadside pub south of Darwin in the 1970s.
"The barmaid put my meal on the counter next to another bloke who was already eating," recalls Murray, "so I pulled up a stool and started chatting to him.
"On the other side of my new acquaintance was an open window and as he turned to say something to me, a white horse poked its head through the window and got stuck into his salad." Oops.
Murray also has his own Jaffa (Capitol Theatre plates, June 29) story to share.
"As a schoolboy I and lots of other teenagers went to a live performance of King Lear and at the dramatic moment when the old king loses his eye, someone dropped a Jaffa in the back row, and it rolled noisily down the wooden aisle."
WHERE IN CANBERRA?
Rating: Easy - Medium
Clue: Underground bunker
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email sent after 10am, Saturday July 20 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Chris Ryan of Kirrawee who was first to identify last week's photo as a 1926 scene of the Sydney Building under construction with Mt Ainslie in the background. The horse and cart are travelling west on what is now London Circuit but in 1926 was called Canberra Circuit. Chris reports the iconic building's architectural twin, the Melbourne Building, commenced construction at around the same time, but was not completed until 1946. Chris also reveals he was none too impressed with the description of the Sydney Building afforded by a visiting hockey team from Queensland in 1935 who "rather unflatteringly described it simply as 'a row of shops'."
Chris also confesses that as a child growing up in Canberra, he found both the Sydney and the Melbourne buildings "decidedly spooky, unfriendly and, frankly, weird, and avoided walking within their confines and in their columnar arched arcades, unless absolutely necessary or unavoidable". Gee, has anyone else been afflicted in this most unusual way?
When Chris eventually overcame his "distaste for, and apprehension about, these foreign-looking and somewhat menacing buildings", in the 1960s he often visited the menswear store on the pictured corner (was it Fletcher Jones?) which featured "a wondrous mechanical delight to ferry customer cash payments, change and receipts on overhead wires to and from the accounts area located on the mezzanine level overlooking the ground-floor retail area".
These "flying foxes", radiating from the single cashier centre to various points of sale below, were sufficient to entrance any young boy or girl in the "Bush Capital", reports Chris who like many Canberrans now admits to having "a far deeper appreciation of the historical, cultural and economic significance of the almost century-old, grand, Italianate twins and their important place in the making of early Canberra". Phew.
This photo, also from the Mildenhall Collection held by the National Archives of Australia, shows a broader view, including part of the Melbourne Building under construction at left.
- CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
