About three years before the Queen embarked on her tour of Canberra to celebrate the Australian capital's 50th birthday, punters were already discussing the inauguration of the newly finished Lake Burley Griffin.
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But as the 1963 milestone neared, there was one problem: the sapphire in the centre of Canberra's crown, the man-made lake, was not ready.
While every Canberran is familiar with the water-filled centrepiece, not every resident is acquainted with the building that came to its rescue: the National Capital Exhibition at Regatta Point.
Today, the hilltop building above Commonwealth Park unravels the story of the planned capital but it might just be the city's least planned structure of all, according to National Capital Authority education and outreach officer Roslyn Hull.
"People were fascinated with the idea of this large-scale construction [of the lake], so they were driving their cars up here and it was starting to compact the earth, which causes problems when you want to grow grass," Ms Hull said.
"The suggestion was made to have some form of car park or a picnic shelter – an observation platform."
As the royal visit drew closer and the drought-stricken lake bed remained dry, something needed to be done.
Glass, displays and the first scale model of Canberra were used to transform the space into the earliest version of the National Capital Exhibition building.
"The idea was to show the Queen what Canberra would look like once the lake was in place," Ms Hull said.
"The landscaping and everything around here was finished in a heck of a rush. One of the legends goes, they were laying the turf just before the Queen was to arrive."
Ms Hull said the original building's expected lifespan was between seven days and one month, according to different sources.
"They thought the public would probably be interested in the display at that time, but then the plan was to turn it into a cafe-cum-restaurant – 50 years later, the public is still interested in our model of Canberra and our displays and we haven't closed," she said.
The 12-sided structure has undergone numerous renovations over the years, but the bones of the original building remained, Ms Hull said.
One of the facility's more curious features has been Cyclops – a camera obscura perched atop Mount Ainslie and connected to the building from the early 1990s until a major renovation in 2000.
"Rather than having a scale model of Canberra ... you could look at Canberra in real time and then staff would use a wooden pointer stick to point out various highlights in [Walter Burley Griffin's] plan," Ms Hull said.
"But apparently it used to break a lot."
While the building has undergone change after change, the structure's pull has not faded.
"I can remember the building in the 1970s and how nice it looked... everyone always took their visitors up to Regatta Point," she said.
"When i came back in the 1990s, of course the view here was stunning. It was like my party trick; any interstate visitors who came to stay, I'd take them up to Regatta Point, show them the model and we'd have a coffee."
