Creator Walter Burley Griffin & Marion Mahony Griffin design consultants / Hardie & Gorman auctioneers

Date 1917

Real estate poster (Sheet 1 of 2) with birdseye view by Marion Mahony Griffin, 1917.

Walter Burley Griffin, designer of the national capital at Canberra, was enlisted by private developers to plan a city at Jervis Bay, beginning with the existing settlement at Callala Bay. A direct rail link to Canberra (via Nerriga in the Budawang Ranges) had been surveyed, and would have been constructed had the Commonwealth's funds not been depleted by the Great War and the 1930s depression. The amibitious scheme by the speculators, envisaged a second Sydney Harbour. Jervis Bay was a deep water port - indeed the new federal naval base was there - and a love of the seaside was driving homebuyers in search of land along the east coast.

On the reverse of this real estate poster, 'Jervis Bay City Home Extension' (see sheet 2) an lengthy real estate prospectus for the proposed Jervis Bay City included glowing predictions for investors which read like this: "The 20th century Rip Van Winkle who falls asleep today will wake in 1940 to find himself grown older, and to be standing in the busy streets of a great city, where land that once was fitted for waterside villas is now sold in narrow blocks as sites of great value. What Jervis Bay is today, Port Jackson [Sydney] and Port Phillip [Melbourne] were within the lifetime of some people still living. How many of them saw what was coming?"

Callala Bay, a century after this poster was made, however, is still a sleepy seaside village.

Marion Mahony Griffin, Walter's talented architect/artist partner who helped him win the worldwide competition for the design of Canberra, prepared the fabulous birdseye perspective. The plan of Jervis Bay City extension is on Sheet 2.

Source: National Library of Australia