45 The National Archives of Australia states the address of this and following photographs as McCoy Circle, which we believe to be McCoy Circuit and have changed it in every instance to reflect the current address.
Figure 10: Australian Institute of Anatomy – under construction. McCoy Circuit, Acton, 1930 (National Archives of Australia 2018)
Figure 11: Australian Institute of Anatomy – under construction, external facing being fitted. McCoy Circuit, Acton, 1930 (National Archives of Australia 2018)
Section 44 - National Film and Sound Archive Heritage Management Plan 2021 - See CRS A292, item C261. | Zoe
At the same time that the go-ahead had been given, in August 1929, for construction of the Director’s residence, Cabinet decided that the cottages for the curator and the groundsman at MacKenzie’s zoological reserve at Westridge would not be built. Like any other government employees, these staff members of the Institute would have to seek accommodation in whatever government housing was
available in Canberra. As for the zoo itself, Cabinet decided that it should proceed. Already, the government foresters had carried out some plantings in the area and some additional preliminary work was now undertaken. With the onset of the Depression, however, the hefty expenditure on the project could no longer be justified. The project was deferred in April 1930, never to be resumed. For some years later
in the 1930s, the Institute housed a number of animals in various cages and enclosures in the grounds of the Canberra Hospital. By 1939, a small reserve for the live animals had been acquired about 65 kilometres from Canberra and stocked with six koalas brought from Victoria.46
It is recorded that a tooth of Diprotodon was uncovered during excavation for the building.47
Figure 14: Australian Institute of Anatomy – completed. McCoy Circuit, Acton, 1930 (National Archives of Australia 2018)
46 Memo, J.H. Cumpston, 5 August 1929, CRS A6269, item E1/29/1341; memo, Cumpston, 5 August 1929; and minute, P.E. Deane, Secretary, Dept of Home Affairs to Secretary, FCC, 11 April 1930, CRS A6272, item E251; ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy July 1st, 1934 to June 30th, 1935’, p. 1, CRS A1928, item 695/17; anon., ‘The Australian Institute of Anatomy’, Australian Journal of Science [hereafter AJS], vol. 2, no. 1, 21 August 1939, p. 4.
The first parts of the Institute, the northern and southern basements, were ready for occupation in January 1930, though the actual occupation did not take place until after mid-February because of lingering dampness in both areas. Completion of the construction phase eventually occurred either towards the end of the year or in the first months of 1931; fitting out of the building was to drag on for several more years. Erected on reinforced concrete foundations, the new building consisted of two sections, an administrative section at the front and two museum blocks at the rear. The museum blocks were ‘constructed with steel frame enclosed in concrete and filled in with brickwork faced with freestone’; the administrative section was simply built of bricks and faced with freestone. The roofs of the museum blocks were constructed of steel girders, while the administrative section had a flat roof made of reinforced concrete and covered with bituminous felt and gravel. Floors made of jarrah or tallow were provided in the museums, their galleries and certain parts of the administration block. All of the joinery in the Institute – doors, bookcases, etc – consisted of black bean or cedar. Double-glazed windows were installed in the museum blocks and the window-frames throughout the building were of steel or bronze.49
The museum blocks were essentially large halls with basements underneath, but the administration block was a far more complex structure internally. It consisted of:
Basement containing osteology room, boiler room, fan rooms, lavatory, strong room, and elevator over storage space …
Ground floor containing entrance hall with attendant’s booth, and stall, anthropology room [northern side facing quadrangle], histology room [northern side at front], director’s room [southern side at front], secretary’s room and waiting room [both southern side], research room [southern side], lavatories, library and lecture room, two staircases and elevator connecting with upper floor …
First floor containing dissection room, osteology room, artist’s and photographer’s room with dark room, six research rooms, cinema projection and rewinding rooms … 50
The new building exhibited a number of special external and internal features that were intended to give it the impressive character that Butters had wanted for it. On the outside, the walls were faced with Hawkesbury sandstone that had been quarried near Gosford, NSW. This stone facing rose from a 30-centimetre-wide panel of Tarana red granite at the base. Morris and Casboulte had deliberately chosen this type of granite for its ‘warmer colour-effect’, in preference to the ‘colder greys’ of more common types of granite. Granite was also used in the construction of the front steps. Internally, black marble that
had been obtained from a quarry about two hundred metres away on Acton Flats was used in the tiling and on the pilasters of the foyer. The Institute is the only building that contains this type of marble, as the Acton quarry was barely able to provide sufficient stone before it was exhausted.51
The principal design motif for the interior of the building was the chevron, a signature Art Deco feature. This motif was employed in the designs of air bricks, ventilators, electric light fittings and architraves, as well as in the pattern of paving stones on the floor of the foyer. In April 1949, the then Director of the Institute, Dr Frederick W. Clements, described the chevron motif as a ‘conventionalised boomerang’. It is not clear whether this was his own interpretation of the chevron motif or whether he had derived this information either directly or indirectly from Morris. Unfortunately, Morris was not much given to providing explanations for his design decisions.52
49 Minute, MacKenzie to Director-General of Health, 17 January 1930, CRS A1928, item 695/3 Section 1; R.P. Stone, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. 1, p. 212; Fifth Annual Report of the Federal Capital Commission for the Year ended 30th June, 1929, Appendix D, ‘Report of Architects Department’ by T.R. Casboulte; PWC, ‘Report together with Minutes of Evidence relating to the Proposed Construction of Buildings for the Institute of Anatomy, at Canberra’, 1929, pp. v, viii, CRS C86, item 229; Dr Frederick W. Clements, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, April 1949, CRS A2644, item 70. See also annual reports of the Institute of Anatomy 1931-9, CRS A1928, item 695/17.
50 PWC, ‘Report together with Minutes of Evidence relating to the Proposed Construction of Buildings for the Institute of Anatomy, at Canberra’, 1929, p. v, CRS C86, item 229.
51 Clements, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, April 1949; and minute, E.H. Hipsley, to Director-General of Health, ‘Description of Building’,
5 December 1949, CRS A2644, item 70; Stone, Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. 1, p. 213; minute, Daley, Secretary, FCC to Secretary, Dept of Home Affairs, 31 May 1929, CRS A431, item 59/450; E.H. Hipsley, ‘Radio Script: Address Children’s Hour 2CA’, 20 June 1949, CRS A1658, item 151/1/1 part 1; NFSA information sheet, ‘The Building of the National Film and Sound Archive’, c. 1994.
52 Clements, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, April 1949; and minute, Hipsley, to Director-General of Health, ‘Description of Building’,
5 December 1949, CRS A2644, item 70; architectural drawing, ‘Institute of Anatomy: entrance to museums’, 10 January 1929, CRS A2505, item AF129.
Figure 17: Proposed Art Deco design features to surround the doors leading to the museums and courtyard, January 1929 (National Archives of Australia)
The decorative skylight over the foyer features the figure of a platypus in stained Luxfer glass. The reason that this animal was given such prominence in the Institute’s scheme of interior decoration was that, in MacKenzie’s scheme of things, the platypus was the link between mammal, bird and reptile. Displayed on the walls of foyer are twelve face masks of distinguished medical scientists, including interestingly one of the French biologist Jean Lamarck, the foremost proponent of the by-then largely discredited theory of the inheritance
of acquired characteristics. The face masks were erected at MacKenzie’s instigation during the 1930s.53
The double entrance doors to the museums and courtyard were supposed to have been surrounded by elaborate Art Deco designs including, above the door, a large stylised representation of what appears to be a grey-headed flying fox (or bat). But these decorative details were never proceeded with, probably for reasons of economy. Other interior decorative features that were carried through include,
on the walls of the two museum blocks, plaques carrying moulded figures of the wombat, tree kangaroo, koala, kookaburra and platypus. Attached to the walls facing onto the courtyard are additional plaques featuring the face of the wombat. Around the front door appears a repeated motif carved in stone of a frilled lizard with its mouth open. Also carved in stone at the top of the columns at the entrance to the building are goannas among ferns and waratahs.54
Figure 18: Proposed Art Deco design features to surround the doors leading to the museums and courtyard, January 1929 (National Archives of Australia)
53 Clements, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, April 1949; and minute, Hipsley, to Director-General of Health, ‘Description of Building’,
5 December 1949, CRS A2644, item 70; Hipsley, ‘Radio Script: Address Children’s Hour 2CA’, 20 June 1949, CRS A1658, item 151/1/1 part 1; ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy July 1st, 1934 to June 30th, 1935’, pp. 1-2, CRS A1928, item 695/17.
54 Stone, Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. 1, p. 213; NFSA information sheet, ‘The Building of the National Film and Sound Archive’; minute, Hipsley, to Director-General of Health, ‘Description of Building’, 5 December 1949, CRS A2644, item 70.
Figure 19: Delegates to a cancer conference in front of the Australian Institute of Anatomy, McCoy Circuit, Acton, 1933 (National Archives of Australia 2018)
MacKenzie and his wife took up permanent residence in Canberra in 1930, moving into the just-completed Director’s residence in August. From the outset, MacKenzie and his loyal staff who had accompanied him from Melbourne were heavily engaged at the Institute in the time-consuming tasks of unpacking the vast quantity of specimens he had accumulated, cataloguing them and arranging them for display. The northern museum block was devoted to displays of applied anatomy, mainly comprising specimens of Australian fauna,
while the southern museum housed osteological exhibits, including casts of some famous prehistoric skulls. Ethnological material was consigned to the basement under the southern museum block where, for the most part, it was to languish for many years in the crates in which it had arrived at the Institute.55
As early as mid-1932, MacKenzie felt that the Institute had progressed to such a degree that it could ‘be regarded as the leading Institute in the Pacific for the study of comparative anatomy in its relation to a correct understanding of human health and disease.’ Scientists from around the country and overseas
were visiting it, he claimed, to learn about the latest developments in comparative anatomy. In January 1932, the Berlei company had even sent its ‘anatomical designer’ to the Institute to take an advanced course in applied anatomy. Tourists also flocked to the Institute. In the financial year 1933-4, the Institute recorded a total of 8,750 visitors, a good number when it is considered that children of sixteen years and younger were not admitted. The public opening hours for the Institute were 9.00-4.30 on weekdays and 9.00-11.00 on Saturdays.56
55 A.J. Proust, History of Medicine in Canberra and Queanbeyan and their Hospitals, Gundaroo, Brolga Press, 1994, p. 41; ‘Report of the Director. Australian Institute of Anatomy. 1st July, 1931-30th June, 1932’, p. 1; and ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy. July 1st 1932-June 30th 1933’, p. 1, CRS A1928, item 695/17; Wurm, ‘The Institute of Anatomy Ethnological Collections’, p. 3; AJS, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 3.
56 ‘Report of the Director. Australian Institute of Anatomy. 1st July, 1931-30th June, 1932’, pp. 3-4; and ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy July 1st 1933 to June 30th 1934’, p. 2, CRS A1928, item 695/17.
From the time of its opening, the Institute also rapidly became a focus for the scientific, cultural and educational life of the national capital. The lecture theatre was extensively used for lectures on such diverse subjects as archaeology, architecture, art, economics, history, international affairs, politics, psychology, religion and veterinary science. From about mid-1930, the Canberra University College conducted its classes in the Institute until lack of space forced it to transfer them to the Hotel Acton in May 1935. Australia’s Third Annual Cancer Conference was held in the building in March 1932 and thereafter succeeding conferences were held there each year during the 1930s. The Royal Society of Australia, of which MacKenzie was the second president, conducted its regular monthly meetings in the building from 1932 onward. From the early 1930s, the Institute was the venue for readings and performances by the Canberra Repertory Society and by Canberra’s Arts and Literature Society. These continued until 1944 when Cumpston put a stop to them on the grounds that they were not fitting activities to be held in a scientific institution.57
A series of endowed lectures contributed to the intellectual life of the Institute. These were, in the order in which they were established:
May 1928: The Halford Oration. An annual lecture, endowed by the Halford family, to honour the memory of the late Professor G.B. Halford who held the Chair of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Melbourne from 1862 to 1907;
August 1928: The Anne MacKenzie Oration. An annual lecture dealing with preventive medicine and the history of human development, endowed by Professor Sir Colin MacKenzie58
in honour of his mother;
July 1930: The Kendall Lecture. A triennial lecture on veterinary science, endowed by the Kendall family in honour of Dr W.T. Kendall, one of the founders of this discipline in Australia;
January 1932: The George Ernest Morrison Lecture in Ethnology. An annual lecture endowed by the Chinese community in Australia and aimed at stimulating
Australian interest in China;
May 1933: The Charles MacKay Lecture. An annual lecture on the history of medicine, endowed by Miss C. MacKenzie in memory of her grandfather.59
Further donations and acquisitions of material steadily expanded the scope and enhanced the standing of the Institute. The new material acquired included:
By 1930: the Burrell Collection, showing all stages in the life cycle of the platypus.
By 1930: a collection of Aboriginal skeletal material from southern Victoria and the Murray River, presented by Murray Black of Gippsland. In the ensuing years, the indefatigable Mr Black sent further collections of Aboriginal skeletons he had pillaged from traditional burial grounds in Victoria and New South Wales.
By 1930: a collection of Aboriginal skeletal material from the Murray River, presented by Dr Nankivell of Kerang, Victoria.
November 1930: the Edmund Milne Collection of ethnographic material, which had hitherto been housed in premises in Ryde, Sydney.
1931: two skeletons, a male and a female, of North American Indians, presented by Harvard University.
1933: a collection of almost 250 specimens presented by Professor Scott of Harvard University’s Museum of Ethnology and comprising a representative sample of the archaeology of the United States.
1933: a collection of 410 items sent by the Ribault Ethnological Museum.
1933: a collection of gall stones donated by Dr Cleaver Woods of Albury.
1934: a vast collection of Papuan ethnological and osteological material donated by Sir Hubert Murray, former Lieutenant- Governor of Papua.
1934: the late Herbert Basedow’s collection of Aboriginal material was acquired by purchase, through the Prime Minister’s Department.
1934: The Department of Defence donated a collection of pathological specimens from World War I.
August 1934: Sir Raphael Cilento presented a collection of deformed New Guinea skulls and simultaneously established
the Cilento Medal to be awarded by the Institute each year to a person deemed to have made the most important contribution to Aboriginal welfare and tropical hygiene in Australia.
57 ‘Report of the Director. Australian Institute of Anatomy. 1st July, 1931-30th June, 1932’, pp. 2, 3, 4; ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy. July 1st 1932-June 30th 1933’, pp. 2, 3; ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy July 1st 1933 to June 30th 1934’, pp. 1-2; ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy July 1st, 1934 to June 30th, 1935’, p. 5, CRS A1928, item 695/17; minute, Director-General of Health to Acting Director, Institute of Anatomy, 16 October 1944, CRS A1928, item 695/3 section 3; MacCallum, ADB, vol. 10, p. 307; Gibbney, Canberra 1913-1953, p. 167.
59 Anon., ‘The orations at the Australian Institute of Anatomy, Canberra’, Health, vol. 11, August 1933, pp. 68-72; ‘Report of the Director. Australian Institute of Anatomy. 1st July, 1931-30th June, 1932’, p. 1, CRS A1928, item 695/17.
1935-6: the Ramsay Smith Collection of 60 skulls was purchased; and
1936: a collection of Australian, Papua-New Guinean and Fijian ethnographic material was purchased from Mr J.W. Lindo from South Australia.60
Perhaps the Institute’s most famous acquisition of all was the heart of the champion Australian racehorse, Phar Lap.
Along with the endowed lectures and the steady acquisition of new material, MacKenzie was successful in securing some additional specialist staff for the Institute during his period as Director. In August 1934, Dr Philip Cutner started work as MacKenzie’s medical assistant, but he unfortunately departed after only seven months. The following year, federal Cabinet approved the creation of two new professional positions at the
Institute, those of experimental biologist and biochemist. In June 1935, Dr Geoffrey Bourne took up the former position and Mr Russell Allan the latter on a temporary basis. Within a year, Miss Doris Anderson had taken over from Allan as the Institute’s biochemist. The vacant position of medical assistant was filled in 1936 by Dr Charles Mackay, who had just returned to Australia after two decades in England.61
Figure 20: Institute of Anatomy, 1933 (National Archives of Australia 2018)
60 Eben H. Hipsley, ‘The Australian Institute of Anatomy’, Health, new series vol. 1, March 1951, p. 18; Wurm, ‘The Institute of Anatomy Ethnological Collections’, p. 2; minute, MacKenzie to Acting Prime Minister, 5 November 1930, CRS A2644, item 70; ‘Report of the Director, Institute of Anatomy. 1st July, 1931-30th June, 1932’, pp. 1-2; ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy. July 1st 1932-June 30th 1933’, p. 1; ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy July 1st 1933 to June 30th 1934’, pp. 2-3; ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy July 1st, 1934 to June 30th, 1935, p. 3; ‘The Australian Institute of Anatomy. Annual Report for the Year ending 30th June, 1936’, p. 2; ‘Annual Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy for the Year 1936-1937’, p. 1; ‘Annual Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy for the Year 1937-1938’, p. 2, CRS A1928, item 695/17.
61 ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy July 1st 1933 to June 30th 1934’, p. 3; ‘Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy July 1st, 1934 to June 30th, 1935’, p. 1; ‘The Australian Institute of Anatomy. Annual Report for the Year ending 30th June, 1936’, p. 1, CRS A1928, item 695/17; ‘Obituary: Charles Vincent MacKay’, MJA, 22 August 1953.
Figure 21: Institute of Anatomy, Mildenhall Collection 1901–1948 (National Library of Australia)
While the Institute flourished for much of the 1930s, there were some problems with the building itself. For some time after its completion, the courtyard remained an eyesore, covered with the contractor’s litter and construction debris. On the initiative of the Civic Administrator, Charles Daley, unemployment relief workers were employed during 1932 to clean up the area, top-dress and sow it with grass seed, and lay down paths of coarse gravel. This was little more than a temporary measure, however, as visitors to the Institute still had to enter the museums by way of the administration and research wing, rather than from the courtyard, as had originally been intended. The difficulty was not resolved until mid-1936 when, in accordance with the original plans, the paths in the courtyard were cemented.62
A more disturbing problem was leakage of the roof during heavy rain. MacKenzie first reported on this in March and April 1936, stating that a ‘considerable volume’ of water had entered both museums during recent rainstorms. To correct the problem, eight additional downpipes were installed. The leakage continued, however, both in the museums and
in the colonnades surrounding the courtyard. A little later in the year, it was discovered that the malthoid roofing had undergone severe weathering, with the roofing over the colonnade particularly badly blistered and perished. Following further instances of heavy leakage into the museums, repairs were eventually carried out on the roofs in 1938. Some unspecified repairs and renovations were also made to the Director’s residence during the same year.63
The end of the MacKenzie period at the Institute – and of its heyday as the scientific and cultural centre of Canberra – occurred with some abruptness. From April to September 1936, MacKenzie took five months’ leave of absence to visit a number of related institutions overseas. Shortly after his return, a ‘mental degeneration’ that had already been evident for at least two years began to deteriorate rapidly. By the latter half of 1937, Cumpston was forced to inform the Minister for Health, now W.M. Hughes, that MacKenzie was ‘mentally quite incapable of any professional work, and … [had] largely to be looked after by somebody else.’ MacKenzie resigned in November 1937 and
returned to Melbourne with his wife. He died there on 29 June 1938. A bronze plaque to his memory was subsequently erected in the foyer of the Institute and his ashes placed behind it.64
In characterising the Institute of Anatomy during MacKenzie’s period as Director, one description that could fairly be applied was that it resembled an extended family or clan. The family influence at the Institute was very strong. Before he married her, MacKenzie’s wife had been his research assistant, while Dr Charles MacKay, who was appointed medical assistant at the Institute in 1936 and became its Acting Director on MacKenzie’s retirement, was MacKenzie’s first cousin. Other Institute staff, such as the histologist Mr W. Owen and the photographic artist Miss Lovett, were long-term members of MacKenzie’s close-knit group of loyal assistants. As already noted, too, MacKenzie established an annual endowed lecture at the Institute in honour of his mother. The Charles MacKay Lecture, established in 1933, was inaugurated in honour of MacKenzie’s maternal grandfather, the endowee being MacKenzie’s sister.
Figure 23: Hotel Acton, Beauchamp House Australian Institute of Anatomy from City Hill 1927–35 (National Archives of Australia 2018)
62 Minute, Daley to Secretary, Dept of Home Affairs, ‘Institute of Anatomy ... Grounds’, 25 February 1932, CRS A431, item 59/450; minute, C.V. MacKay to Director-General of Health, 11 May 1936, CRS A1928, item 695/3 section 2; ‘Annual Report of the Australian Institute of Anatomy for the Year 1936-1937’, p. 1, CRS A1928, item 695/17.
63 Minute, MacKenzie to Director General of Health, 20 April 1936; minute, MacKay to Director-General of Health, ‘Re Malthoid Covering of Roof of this Institute’, 8 May 1936; minute, P.A. Gourgand to Director-General of Health, ‘Institute of Anatomy - Roofing’, 2 December 1936, CRS A1928, item 695/3 section 2; minute, MacKay to Director-General of Health, ‘Maintenance of Building’, 13 May 1938, CRS A1928, item 695/3 section 3.
64 ‘The Australian Institute of Anatomy. Annual Report for the Year ending 30th June, 1936’, p. 1, CRS A1928, item 695/17; letter, Cumpston to W.M. Hughes, 29 October 1937, CRS A1928, item 695/24; Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. 5, p. 435, NFSA information sheet, ‘The Building of the National Film and Sound Archive’.
Even the Halford Oration and the face mask of Halford in the foyer of the Institute bespeak a connection with the MacKenzie family. Halford had taught MacKenzie and two of his older brothers at the Melbourne medical school. It is possible as well that some family influence was at work in securing the Basedow Collection for the Institute. Basedow had been an associate of the explorer Donald Mackay and had in fact led the second Mackay expedition into Arnhem Land. Mackay was the son of an Alexander Mackay and Annie MacKenzie who, like MacKenzie’s own parents, hailed from the eastern highlands of Scotland.65
The Institute of Anatomy could also be characterised from the very beginning as a curiously anachronistic institution. It is almost
as though it embodied a prolongation of the Victorian custom of amassing vast collections of natural history specimens. MacKenzie’s theories about the relevance of the study of Australia’s fauna to human health also appear rather quaint. Ironically, it was one of MacKenzie’s own family who delivered the most devastating assessment of these theories. In response to an enquiry from Cumpston after MacKenzie’s retirement, Dr Charles MacKay proffered the following remarkably candid opinion:
[The] purpose was to ascertain whether our native animals held secrets which might shed light on problems associated with the health and disease of human beings living in the Commonwealth.
It is my considered opinion, given very reluctantly, that this second objective has proved to be impracticable.
I do not think that the Australian native animals are likely either now or in the future to give us any special information which will definitely alter the practice of medicine or surgery in any one particular.66
This assessment was echoed by the eminent anatomist, Professor Frederick Wood Jones, who was quoted by Cumpston as saying that the relevance of the study of Australian animals to human health was ‘very remote’, such that it was ‘hardly worth while further pursuing this presumed relationship.’67
Figure 24: Australian Institute of Anatomy by Frank Hurley,1938 (National Library of Australia 2018)
65 MJA, 22 August 1953, p. 315; Health, August 1933, pp. 70-2; Ian Harmstorf, ‘Basedow, Herbert’, ADB, vol. 7, pp. 202-3; David Carment, ‘Mackay, Donald George’, ADB, vol. 10, pp. 289-90.