Bruce Hall History

Bruce Hall is the oldest residential Hall at the Australian National University. Founded in 1961, it was named after Stanley Melbourne Bruce, Prime Minister of Australia from 1923 to 1929. Bruce was a Victorian businessman, lawyer and conservative politician. Although born in Australia, he was educated in England, fought in the British army at Gallipoli, had an Oxford accent, and has been described as being more English in manner than many Englishman. He is the only Australian born person to be made a Member of the House of Lords, whereupon he assumed the title Lord Bruce of Melbourne. He served as the first Chancellor of the Australian National University from 1951 to 1961.

Bruce Hall has its own charter and coat of arms. Its motto translates as Happy is the person able to discover the reasons for things. This suggests one of the great traditions of Bruce Hall: that its residents strive for academic excellence and share a thirst for knowledge and understanding across disciplines and beyond their own subject areas. There is also a tradition of striving for excellence in sports and the arts, and for encouraging each resident to achieve their own personal best in all aspects of life.

Likewise, an important symbol for the Hall is Uroboros, an image of a dragon devouring its own tail which represents a being containing all life and knowlege. Several images of Uroboros can be found around the Hall, including a large painting in the Junior Common Room, created for that location by Pamela MacFarlane in 1963. Other references to Uroboros and to dragons are common, including the crest of the Common Room Committee and in the names of Hall publications.