Parliament House

The Foyer

This was also a free guided tour. Firstly we had to go through all the security like at the airport, which took a while as so many people turned up for this tour, quite a few hundred. We had a lovely English tour guide, he works for the Legislative council. Parliament House is interesting inside as it has two distinct parts halves. The House of Assembly side was built in 1889 and is very green. The green carpet has octagon shapes with sheafs of wheat, wattle and grapes with vine leaves, then edged in red carpet with Sturt Desert Peas. All the passage ways and offices are very decorative with painted plaster work (very Victorian). The Legislative Council side was built in 1939 and is very red. The carpet has squares with sturt desert peas in them. All the passage ways and offices have lots of unpainted timber with plain decor, not decorative as the older section.

Various stages of the build

The reason why the two sides are so different is that when building Parliament House, the government ran out of money (surprise) and only built half. Then 50 years later Sir Langdon Bonython made a gift
£100,000 for them to build the other half as he was sick of looking at the blank wall that faced King William Street.

The House of Assembly

The Legislative Council

We had a tour through both sides, looked in the library and saw the very rare books the have there. The Library has 12 staff with only 2 being Librarians, the other 10 are lawyers and Uni graduates with Ph D’s as the work for the Librarian has changed so much regarding research, that they need legal/research degrees to perform them. Parliament House is a very
worthwhile place to visit.