The only existing film footage of Alfred Deakin survives in a short pictorial record of the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia at Sydney's Centennial Park on 1 January 1901, the first day of the new century. Attired in tophat and tails, Deakin descends the octagonal pavilion where he had just been sworn in as Attorney-General in Edmund Barton's government. In this brief glimpse of the living man, self-consciously doffing his hat to the crowd as he descends alone after taking the oath of office, we note first the slight stoop and lean physical stature, a certain fatigue described on his face, and a truly enigmatic smile. It is the smile of a public man accustomed to ceremonial, but there is something besides.

At the bottom of the stairs Deakin sees the camera and gazes into it for a moment, then in the remaining seconds as he passes by, the hat somehow comes between his face and the lens of posterity. In another, this gesture might easily be passed over or be put down to natural shyness; but in this unusual man, it is a gesture that might well have carried a meaning, even if half-conscious and impromptu. With a profound sense of history and destiny, a penchant for ‘signs’ and significant dates, and with an abiding Faith in the All-Seeing Providence, perhaps to Deakin this action signified humility at this triumphant moment they had been working toward for over a decade.