Election night. Do you watch the coverage? While many people can’t reach for the remote fast enough, for others it’s a tradition to settle in for a long night, hoping for a celebration while ever-prepared for a wake.   

Before there was television coverage, Australians gathered around the radio – the ‘wireless’ – on election night to hear the results. Tally rooms were established in each of the state capital cities to relay the results to radio stations during the count. The General Post Office in Sydney was the tally room where all results for federal elections were collated. However, in 1954 it was decided to transfer the national tally room to the Commonwealth Electoral Office (CEO) in Canberra.

Television arrived in Australia in 1956, and networks quickly realised that the excitement of election night would make for perfect television. For the 1958 general election cameras were allowed into the CEO’s new Canberra tally room to record events, but there was never going to be enough space there for all the cameras, equipment and people needed for a live broadcast.  

Instead, a tally room in Sydney was maintained, and the ABC went all out with a massively complex live broadcast. It established an outside broadcast unit in the tally room, anchored by its main broadcast from its own studios in Gore Hill. The now-familiar elements of election broadcasts were established: filming of the tally boards, journalists announcing results live to camera and analysing them with a panel of experts.  

Bowing to the inevitable, from 1963 onwards the CEO in Canberra arranged external premises for its national tally room. The search was for ever-bigger spaces, including several Canberra high school halls, for the many media outlets and television networks wanting to broadcast from the tally room.

Eventually, from 1980, a long-term arrangement was made to host the national tally room at the Canberra showgrounds, now known as Exhibition Park, or EPIC. All 3,310 square metres of space at the Budawang Pavilion were needed, and the massive new tally board became an icon in itself, installed and de-installed for every election.

Now of course there is no tally room. Broadcasters receive results direct to their studios, and the competition is for the fanciest and fastest digital graphics. The tally board's final use was in 2010, after which it was donated to the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House.

If you miss the drama and spectacle of live-action democracy, please enjoy this selection of images of tally rooms of yore from the national archival collection.