David Austin on his wedding day with his wife Katherine at The Lodge. Photos: Supplied.
When David Austin and his wife were planning their wedding in 1996, they needed somewhere for the photographs. David had a slightly unusual suggestion: the Prime Minister’s official residence.
There was, at least, a family reason for asking. David’s great-grandfather was Joseph Lyons, Australia’s 10th prime minister, and his grandmother Enid had lived at The Lodge as a girl during Lyons’ years in office.
So David wrote to newly elected prime minister John Howard, explained the family connection and asked whether they could return to The Lodge for their wedding photographs. “He said no problem,” David recalled.
After the ceremony and before the reception, the newlyweds headed to The Lodge. Howard wasn’t there, but a security guard gave David a line he still remembers 30 years later.
“I do remember the security guard there saying, ‘This has never happened before’, and I’m pretty sure it would never happen now,” he said.
The photographs are one small piece of a family story deeply intertwined with Canberra – from politics and education to the city’s transformation across generations. David was born at Canberra Hospital and grew up in Weston Creek.
Apart from moving out of the suburb after marriage, he has never lived anywhere else, eventually returning to Weston Creek about 15 years ago.
His connection to Canberra’s Catholic education system has been almost as enduring.
He started kindergarten at St John Vianney’s Primary School in Waramanga in the 1970s, went through Catholic schools and Marist College, then studied teaching at what is now Australian Catholic University.
“I’ve never had a year off. It’s just nonstop,” he said. “I know nothing different.”
His first class was Year 4 at St Edmund’s College. He went on to teach across Canberra before moving into leadership and has now spent 21 consecutive years as a principal across four schools.
He is currently principal of Sacred Heart Primary School in Pearce, where he had taught earlier in his career.
After running schools of different sizes, including Good Shepherd in Amaroo with about 800 students, David deliberately returned to a smaller community.
“I just felt a calling to go back and support a small school,” he said.
“You know everybody, the community, you know every parent, every grandparent.”
After more than 50 years in Canberra schools, first as a child and then as an educator, David has also watched childhood itself change.
“School was fun,” he said. It shaped his career.
“There was a spark,” he said. “Something happened to me in primary school where I went, ‘I wanna be that person at the front helping these kids’.”
Today, he said, teachers and principals operate in a far more regulated environment, with risk assessments, data collection and compliance consuming time once spent with students and families.
“The red tape. It’s incredible.”
Even school discos, once largely parent-run, now depend on staff volunteering because of child-safety requirements.
“So the fun goes, if you know what I mean,” he said. But perhaps the starkest change is in children’s independence.
Not one of the almost 300 students at Sacred Heart catches a bus to school, David said. “Back in the day, everyone caught the bus. Everyone rode home.”
There were sleepovers and much longer stretches of time away from parents. Today, he encounters children on school camps who have never spent a night away from home.
David has also noticed changes in resilience since COVID, although he is cautious about attributing that solely to the pandemic.
“These kids we’ve got now are the COVID kids,” he said. “They’re the ones who went through it, or were born through it.”
His mother, Margueritte Austin remembers an even more independent Canberra childhood. She arrived from Melbourne as a nine-year-old in 1956 after her father took a job with AV Jennings. The family settled in Deakin, but there wasn’t much beyond their backyard.
“There was nothing over the back fence, nothing at all,” she recalled.
“There were paddocks and sheep … We looked down into the Woden Valley. It didn’t exist – or the Mint or anything down there. There was nothing, just paddocks.”
She walked to Yarralumla Primary School and later caught the bus from Deakin to Braddon.
Children spent much of their free time outdoors. “Parents used to say, you know, ‘When the lights come on in the street, come home’, and we used to do that,” she said.
With six children sharing a three-bedroom house, there was plenty of incentive to get outside. For David, another striking change has been in the relationship between parents and schools. He remembers coming home after getting into trouble and being asked: “What did you do?”
Today, one of the harder parts of being a principal can be dealing with complaints about disputes between children. David stressed that genuine bullying must be taken seriously, but said ordinary disagreements can sometimes be labelled bullying. “That’s up to me though to educate parents all the time and educate everyone in my community – what is bullying and what is being mean and what is just being unkind,” he said.
“Bullying, we take it very seriously, obviously. We don’t want any child ever to be targeted by a child.”
Education also brings David’s story back to his famous family. Joseph and Enid Lyons were both teachers before entering politics. Joseph became prime minister and Dame Enid later became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.
David didn’t follow them into politics, but he sees a connection.
“I just think it’s quite interesting that I’ve, you know, not followed their footsteps in politics, but certainly, certainly in education,” he said.
The tradition is continuing. His sister Caroline is a teacher and now works alongside him at Sacred Heart, while his youngest daughter, Amelia, is studying teaching at Australian Catholic University.
“A lot of teachers,” David laughed.
His other children have also remained in Canberra. Georgia is a neonatal nurse at Canberra Hospital, Oliver works in commercial property, and Harry has completed a degree in medical science.
The family staying close echoes another part of the Canberra his mother remembers. She recalls neighbours mixing far more when she was young and friendships stretching across decades. A Catholic youth group she reluctantly joined as a teenager produced friends she still sees today.
“No one wanted to go to the youth group because that wasn’t a very cool thing to do,” she said. But on the day she spoke to Region, she had just had lunch with someone she met when she was 10.
“I’ve known him for 70 years,” she said. Canberra has spread far beyond the paddocks and sheep she once saw from her Deakin backyard, but neither mother nor son has found much reason to leave.
“Once we moved here, there’s never any thought of moving anywhere else,” she said. “We just loved the lifestyle. It wasn’t as busy as the big cities.”
Almost 70 years later, David’s reasons sound remarkably similar. “I know it’s a cliché, but it’s a great place to raise kids.”
“The infrastructure, the sport, the open spaces, close to the coast, close to the snow, close to Sydney even.” The Canberra of his childhood may have grown considerably, but David doesn’t think its character has entirely disappeared.
“Much more populated,” he said, “but still a country town feel that always has been really.” And perhaps that’s why those wedding photographs at The Lodge feel so fitting.
More than nine decades after his great-grandfather lived there as prime minister, David is still in the city – back in the suburb where he grew up, leading a Canberra school and watching another generation of his family build their lives here.
And, 30 years after returning to The Lodge for those wedding photographs, David suspects the security guard who greeted them that day was probably right.
It was an unusual privilege then. He doubts anyone would get away with it now.
Have you lived in Canberra for more than 50 years? We’d love to hear your story. Email us at nalvi@region.com.au.
