100 years of Australia House
23 November 2018
Image credit: Brian Roberts
Take a behind-the-scenes tour of Australia’s oldest diplomatic mission, once described as the nation’s most important building.
Completed in 1918, Australia House is a lavish building, which is steeped in history, and the home of our oldest diplomatic mission. Described in 1930 by one journalist as the “national foyer”, it’s been much more than an embassy for many of its 100 years, once housing banking facilities, a poste restante, an information counter, a cafeteria and a reading room. With heightened security concerns, much of that has gone, but a small piece of Australia still exists on a triangle of land between Aldwych and the Strand in London’s West End. In the centre of Australia House is the high commissioner’s office.
