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Any doubts on the wisdom of beginning immediatelyto build a new House were at onceforgotten!While that session was in progress, I wasdoubtless asleep in my cot on the wide balconyof the house where I was born, overlookingthe Swan River from Bellevue Terrace. I'vebeen told it was the first house to be builtthere; certainly I possess a photograph takenfrom Mount's Bay road (or rather track!), thatshows it sticking up against the sky like theproverbial thumb, quite solitary. Family legendrelates that my father's friends thought himdemented to build there—^Adelaide Terrace wasthe residential area. But his disconcertingchoice has left me with a very special attachmentto the River my infant eyes more or lessopened on (they say stock always seek for thewaters beside which they are born). However,we moved from there, and my father movedfrom the Department of Works to become theState's first Public Service Commissioner.Nevertheless, on a number of occasions I wasshown the finished design for Parliament Housethat had been drawn by the Government Architect,Mr H. L. Grainger. His was the designfinally accepted, and the first stage had soonbeen constructed.Unrolled for my benefit, the great plansappeared to me quite marvellous. (Certainly,studied today, Mr Grainger's designs are farmore suitable and elegant than the first, secondand third chosen from those submitted. Althoughnone were accepted, the Governmentdistributed half the prize money.) From thattime on, I always looked up the Terrace withsome glorious fairy-tale structure or KublaKhan Dome, in my mind's eye. When I grewup, I simply replaced my childish vision by aHouse of dignified and elegant classical beauty.Something gloriously simple and austere in thestyle of the Parthenon, I suppose—which I nowknow is more sublime than any photographcan show, largely because its elevated positionadds the subtle magic of changing light andshade to impeccable proportions.After my father's death, my mother and Ilived in Malcolm St. Up and down I walked,mostly three times a day, throughout my teenageyears. I took a dislike to the Barracks,then. The back view offended me; even morethan the dangling hoop-iron bond-strips stillhopefully protruding (seventeen years on)from the unfaced brick walls on the hill above,all ready to be joined up to what I still believedwould one day take form: a beautifulfront facade to Parliament House.The Barracks back view was, in fact, quiteslummy. All it lacked were strings of ghostlysoldiers' ghostly socks hanging out to dry. Butno one seemed to mind that depressing view,if they even noticed it—backviews withskiUions and wooden whatnots were part ofthe Western Austrahan scene at that time.But I also became more intimate with MrGrainger's Harvest Terrace facade to theHouse. I was asked to paint a water-colourminiature to adorn an Illuminated Addresspresented by some Associates (I cannot recallwhich) to Mrs Edith Cowan, O.B.E. who onher election to our Legislative Assembly becamethe first woman Member to sit in an AustralianParhament. Later still, one of the beautifulfront rooms situated in the turrets of theOld Barracks, became my husband's office inthe Public Works Department. I often enoughwas able to enjoy looking out, right down theTerrace, to the blue and purple of the DarlingRange. (Fortunately, the back parts had beensomewhat tidied up and painted, by then.)So one way and another, the Houses of Parliamentand the Old Barracks became closelyassociated with my view of Perth, both in factand in imagination.And now the Front has been added to theHouse.While it was still building, I retained hopes.Once built, planted above the City like a thriftynest of pigeon-holes (inside, I may say, thedesign is as attractive as outside it is strictlyutilitarian, so that Members, beguiled, may forgetthe public view)—once built, my dreamsdissolved in commonplace reality. I turnedmy interest to the preservation of the Barracksas a City of Perth Museum, a screen as itv/ere, of historical significance.When eventually public outcry alone savedthe old building from total destruction, wehappened to be absent in Europe. And in fairnessI must acknowledge that when on returnI saw the scanty remnant of our once-proudArch, I cried out, "Oh no! Now the soonerthat goes, the better!"After all, I was fresh from the Arc deTriomphe in Paris, the Wellington MemorialArch in London, Constantine's Arch in Rome,Hadrian's in Athens, Washington's in NewYork, even the worn yet splendid Arch ofGalerius in Salonika; not all seen in a singlepilgrimage, but near enough. Near enough forme to have a vision of proud arches. (Besides,Constantine's Arch in Rome has a very specialinterest for me, and possibly for other WesternAustralians: the beautiful and world-famousCameo, a Medal of a sort, that was carriedashore away back in 1629 from the wreckedNetherlands ship Batavia to rest for months onBeacon Island in the Wallaby Group of theWESTERLY, No. 1 of 1967 63