Melbourne’s ‘palace’ throws open doors to mark 125 years of history

More than a century ago, the Royal Exhibition Building was briefly the highest seat of power in the country.

Last week, the grand landmark nestled in the Carlton Gardens played host to a wedding expo. Later this month, its sprawling Great Hall will be filled with punters for a baby gear trade fair, followed by an arts and design market.

On Saturday, the building will mark 125 years since the first sitting of Australia’s federal parliament on May 9, 1901.

To celebrate, Museums Victoria is swinging open the building’s enormous green doors for a weekend of free public events, including rare free access to the building’s dome promenade, which offers 360-degree views of the Melbourne skyline.

The centrepiece of the commemoration is a monumental four-metre-wide painting by Charles Nuttall, The Opening, Commonwealth Parliament, which has been retrieved from the museum’s cavernous storage facility for its first public display in 25 years.

The painting is a time capsule of the late Victorian era and the birth of a national government under Australia’s first prime minister, Sir Edmund Barton. It shows the Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V) addressing the parliament on behalf of King Edward VII, to 12,000 guests.

At the time, The Age described the scene as a “magnificent sight”.

“Never before has Melbourne seen so brilliant a gathering,” the paper reported.

Nuttall, who was colourblind and worked in sepia tones, was commissioned by a group of Melbourne businessmen keen to immortalise themselves in the historic moment.

The artist sketched the scene from the balcony during the ceremony, and then spent 18 months travelling the country to draw 343 identifiable figures before painstakingly painting them in.

Upon its completion in 1902, the artwork embarked on an international odyssey – first shipped to Paris to be reproduced via photogravure, then to London for inspection by Edward VII and the public.

After returning to Melbourne, it was given to the Royal Exhibition Building’s trustees and hung until the 1950s, when it was unceremoniously moved into storage.

For the next three decades, it remained largely forgotten and suffered damage, until it was rediscovered in the 1980s.

The building’s history has mirrored a similar cycle of neglect and revival.

Designed by Joseph Reed in 1880, its architecture is a “rich, eclectic array of influences”, says Museums Victoria head of history Dr Michelle Stevenson, drawing inspiration from the Duomo in Florence and the Palace of Versailles.

The murals throughout the building were painted for the 1901 preparations, and Stevenson says the building’s trustees famously ordered the “sylphs” – bare-breasted female figures on the walls – be “modestly” covered up before the opening of parliament.

“If you look at them very closely [today], you can see that the draping around their breasts has been added heavier,” Stevenson says.

Though the Exhibition Building hosted the opening ceremony and the formal swearing-in of members of parliament, for the next 26 years, the federal government occupied the Victorian Parliament House on Spring Street while the construction was completed in Canberra.

During this quarter-century “interlude,” the state parliament traded places, operating in a specially constructed chamber within the western annex of the Exhibition Building.

In 1919, the building served as a Spanish flu hospital, and became a training barracks for the RAAF during World War II, when it was damaged. By the 1950s, it had become a “white elephant”, according to Stevenson, and was almost demolished to make way for a car park, saved only by a single council vote.

Last year, the landmark received a $9.6 million injection to address underlying structural and conservation issues.

Museums Victoria plans to recreate Nuttall’s painting with a commemorative photograph on Saturday morning with parliamentarians, First Nations representatives and other guests, before public events begin at midday.

The two-day schedule includes an exhibition about the first parliamentary sitting, a live debate by the Victorian Youth Parliament presided over by Governor-General Sam Mostyn, free history tours, children’s craft activities, food trucks, and cultural music and dance performances.

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