The Garden of Australian Dreams (GOAD) is not just the sunken single dimension space at the lower level of the National Museum of Australia (NMA) it is a three dimensional space including the horizontal and vertical planes that surround it.
When trying to understand the GOAD I walked around the space and found that the more imposing feeling I had was not of the garden but of the walls surrounding the garden.
Therefore the most important feature for me was the words on the walls that I could not understand that spoke to me.
I didn’t understand the Braille but I knew it was important to help me to understand the significance of the GOAD.
The words on the walls appealed to me because I couldn’t immediately understand what they were saying.
It references the silent majority who wanted to say sorry to the aboriginal people.
Richard Weller and the architect Howard Raggatt were committed to making the most of the opportunity given to them to make a statement of the aboriginal situation in Australia.
In my research of the GOAD I found out that the bumps on the façade surrounding the GOAD were Braille. And I further I found that the Braille made sense and words like sorry, Mate, mate, mate were expressed on the face of the building.
I also found, and very few people know this that the Braille written on the façade of the NMA were made relating to the white man and aboriginal conflict. These strong words were changed the day before the official opening by the Prime Minister of the day John Howard. People think the word that was changed was “sorry” but that word in fact still in on the face of the NMA.
The Goad is considered postmodern architecture because it references experiences and things our country has been through.
