Engineering reports recently dug out of the government's archives reveal a slightly more unpleasant vision for what would become Lake Burley Griffin.

Technical reports dated to 1962 – the year before filling began – warned about the possibility of the lake becoming a boggy swamp with windswept banks and murky waters.

"The Canberra Lake will be exposed to north-westerly and westerly winds and considerable erosion of the sand, silt and clay deposits will probably be caused by wave action," read one of the government reports.

"The lake margin will be submitted to more or less complete saturation and where the margin consists of fine-grained windblown sand, silt and clay the water will not drain away readily.

"In this way, marsh, swamp or bog associations are developed."

Despite these concerns, Lake Burley Griffin was completed in 1963 with the damming of the Molonglo River that ran through the centre of the burgeoning city.

The lake was the brainchild of Walter Burley Griffin, the American architect who laid-out Canberra's iconic landscape in his winning 1911 entry to a national design competition.

Although he imagined a sweeping artificial lake accessible to all residents, experts wondered how easily this vision could be fulfilled.

"As practically the whole of the foreshore will be accessible to the public, all clayey (sic) and silty areas will have to be treated to avoid boggy or marshy conditions," engineers wrote following their 1962 survey.

"Dressing with sand may be adequate in places, but removal and replacement by sand and gravel will be needed elsewhere.

"Suitable vegetation cover would provide an alternative or supplementary treatment."

Burley Griffin left Australia in 1920 after a dispute with the federal government and it took many years, and arguments, before his final vision would be fulfilled.

The excavation of the lake began in 1960 and filling started in 1963 although, due to an ongoing drought, the lake did not reach its target water level until April 1964.

Today, the lake's shores are a thriving hub of activity and are home to a number of parks, cafes, tourist attractions and national institutions.

The 1962 report was prepared by the then-Department of National Development and was recently released by government agency Geosciences Australia.

It was released as part of an ongoing program to digitise and publish old government briefings and records.