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The Department of the Interior was in on an urgent recall on this day in 1957, looking for about 45,000 defective bricks that had been sent out to building sites.
A new clay pit had recently been opened at the brickworks and it turned out the quantity of lime in the bricks meant they were susceptible to expanding and breaking up when wet. Hardly ideal for the famously sturdy material.
A Canberra businessman had "pointed to a crumbled stack of what he described as 'beautiful' bricks" and described how they expanded in the wet and burst.
About 18,000 bricks delivered to the site of a new bank building were rejected but it was known that a good number had already been built into walls at sites around the city.
They would have to be pulled out and replaced, an expensive exercise.
But one industry's disaster is another's opportunity. The manager of the NSW sawmillers association reassured readers that the city could continue to expand with wood rather than brick. Large quantities of timber could be delivered to Canberra at short notice, he said.
