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Perin CC Miller, Continental Cans, etc.: A Tourist’s Guide to European Plumbing (1962)

Despite a long tradition of naming Canberra suburbs after Australia’s prime ministers and other leading political figures, Australia’s longest serving PM has not received a similar honour. Ironically, while there is a suburb named after Sir Robert’s thrice defeated opponent Herbert Evatt, there is no ACT addresses listed under ‘Menzies’, because he personally requested that there would not be – and this wish has so far been respected.

However, if the ACT planners did wish to pay tribute to a member of the Menzies family, there is a great case to be made that they could justifiably name a suburb after Edwina Henderson. For, as Ted Ling relates in The Menzies Ascendency:

‘Canberra’s post-war resurgence can be set almost to the day with the birth of a baby girl, Edwina Henderson, on 6 March 1956. She was Robert and Pattie Menzies’s first grandchild and they doted on her, but her birth brought home to the prime minister the poor state of Canberra’s development. For Menzies was soon being harassed by Pattie and daughter Heather Henderson (Edwina Henderson’s mother) about the lack of facilities in Canberra.’

And so Menzies ultimately resolved to transform Canberra into a worthy national capital, after previous development plans had long been delayed on account of the Great Depression and Second World War. If you have ever driven through the ACT and wondered why the Territory is criss-crossed by a system of such extravagant footpaths, it is due in large part to the trouble that the Menzies/Henderson family encountered trying to push Edwina’s pram around the city.

The copy of Continental Cans that can be found in the Menzies Collection is a touching memento of Edwina’s childhood. As this humorous catalogue of European lavatories was personally inscribed by the girl when she would have been approximately 6 years of age, and thus just starting to develop a firm grasp of handwriting. The inscription also records the pet names that the Henderson family gave to their famous grandparents, with Sir Robert and Dame Pattie being affectionately referred to as ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’.