If you were considering buying a block of land in Canberra in the 1920s, you really had to believe in the place.
The brand-new capital city had just a few thousand residents in 1924, but over the border in Queanbeyan, Della Calthorpe was eyeing the empty streets and sense of possibility.
She told her husband, stock and real estate agent Harry Calthorpe, that Canberra would be the place to be in years to come.
By 1927, the Calthorpes had built one of the capital's earliest homes on Mugga Way, a Spanish mission-style cottage set within a large garden. It was, both inside and out, the epitome of Australian middle-class style and taste, and it's all still there today.
Preserved in amber, the home's original furniture, fabrics, dishes and appliances are all in place - a perfect time capsule for life in Canberra's first full decade.
Anna Wong, director of Canberra Museum and Gallery, which manages the home as a museum, says the Calthorpes were committed to the Canberra project.
"They were invested, literally but also emotionally, in the future of Canberra," she says.
"They really saw it as this bright, new world post-war. And they were inspired, I guess, by the progressive ideals of what Canberra as the new federal capital represented."
Meanwhile, other houses were going up along Mugga Way, already slated as the city's most prestigious street.
The late, great Dawn Waterhouse (nee Calthorpe), who grew up there, had vivid and pleasant memories of Canberra in its earliest days - the wide expanses of unbuilt suburbia, paddocks criss-crossed by all kinds of people, usually on bicycles, often whistling a tune.
Even during the Depression and war years, there was always something to do.
"The progress in Canberra had been so slow, you hardly noticed it. Or, well you would notice it because somebody would say, 'Oh, there's a new house being built over in Reid or somewhere, and you'd go and have a look at it on your Sunday drive'," Mrs Waterhouse said.
But in the 1920s? Many residents were still living in tents or temporary settlements around what would become Yarralumla as they waited for permanent housing.
Gorman House was built around this time, as were the Hotel Canberra (now the Hyatt) and the Hotel Kurrajong, not to mention Old Parliament House. Mrs Waterhouse notes that progress was slow - "but it was progress," she said - but it's worth noting that Old Parliament House, such a large, grand and solid edifice, took just two years to build. So did the Hotel Canberra.
The Albert Hall took only a year, and swiftly became a social hub, hosting weekly dances and town hall events. There were picnics at the Acton Racecourse - now submerged under Lake Burley Griffin - and people flocked to the brand new shopping hubs at Manuka and Kingston.
The Sydney and Melbourne Buildings, which began going up in 1926 and took until the end of World War II, have a similar aesthetic to Calthorpes House, with their Mediterranean-style arches and biscuity paintwork.
But the house most resembles another residence built around the same time - the Lodge, the prime minister's residence that was intended to be only temporary. It was designed by Melbourne architects Oakley & Parkes, who had won a competition in 1924 to shape the Forrest precinct. The Calthorpes hired them to create a home of their own design.
But it was, says Wong, very of its time, "with the rough-cast walls on the outside, the tiles, the terracotta roof, the arch, deep porticoes and porches at the front and the verandahs. It was very en vogue for the period."
