Wilson and Brigden left Canberra for Melbourne, where Manpower and Industry would be directed. And, in the opposite direction, Giblin and Copland left Melbourne for Canberra. The two shared digs in the capital, and Giblin reported to Eilean this arrangement was ‘going well’, despite his vexation at ‘German music’ being banned from the ABC. In June 1940 after reading some ‘very depressing’ cables from Bruce about the war in France, and presumably feeling his opportunities for leave from Canberra had suddenly diminished, Giblin beckoned Eilean to leave Melbourne for the capital. The hunt for quarters suitable for a couple began; Giblin discussed the possibility of using the Brigden’s house, which was being rented to the United States ‘legation’.

The Giblins settled down to the eccentric austerity of wartime Canberra: of meat and butter ‘usually unobtainable’; bacon ‘unprocurable’; the milk almost bluish in winter; wood hard to get (when seven tonnes might be needed each winter), and mysteriously sudden evaporations of particular commodities – bootlaces one month, envelopes another. But Giblin, of course, enjoyed the physical demands of this life. His letters record with satisfaction his 10 pullets providing eggs; the 130 lb of pumpkin he harvested; and the strawberry patch that yielded strawberries so ample that their consumption would ‘require the help of neighbours’.

Each day Giblin, in ‘a thick tweed suit, … a badgeless digger hat; the same red tie, the clog like boots, large pipe … and the huge bushman’s pack’ (Reynolds c. 1951) would make his way to the small room on the top floor of External Affairs and Treasury. In this ‘sunny corner of the top floor of West Block, Canberra, … he crouched over his pipe among a litter of papers, [and provided] not only a cell of economic thought but a place where many departmental and inter-departmental tangles were unwound by honest and straightforward commonsense (Hasluck 1952, p. 452). Hasluck later recalled it was a ‘privilege’ to work ‘close to this great Australian, sagacious, humorous, kindly to persons, devastating to humbug (Hasluck 1980, p. 64). Giblin, said Hasluck, ‘had a sanifying influence. He showed us the things we had to think about and helped keep the thinking straight. His personality had the effect of sand paper, rough but polishing others’ (Hasluck 1954, p. 138).