“I mean I literally never thought they would build it, even when we’d won the competition. We were working on it and I thought, someone’s going to say ‘no, this is silly.’ – Peter Tonkin
Commissioned by the Friends of the National Arboretum Canberra to celebrate ten year’s since the Arboretum’s opening, this short documentary tells the story of the site’s transformation from pine plantations devastated in the 2003 bushfires to what has become the most visited attraction in Australia’s capital city.
Covering the rollercoaster of public opinion, political backlash, a design then at the ‘bleeding edge’ of the possible, and not least the challenge of planting 100 forests in the midst of drought, the film also acknowledges the thousands of people who, over the course of two decades, have made the National Arboretum what it is today.
Our thanks to the Friends, to everyone who provided archival material for this project, and to the interviewees who kindly shared their stories, including former ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope; Peter Tonkin and Perry Lethlean from the winning design team of Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects and Taylor Cullity Lethlean Landscape Architects; tireless advocate John Mackay; Professor Peter Kanowski; Dr Roger Hnatiuk and Jocelyn Plovits.
