To mark the 30th anniversary of “CityNews”, social historian and journalist NICHOLE OVERALL has written an eclectic history of Canberra and beyond over the past three decades. Here is 2015.
Stuff we’re talking about:
At 80, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet and Nobel Peace Prize winner (1989) – and “Simpsons” star – makes his 10th visit to Australia (Canberra’s hosted His Holiness on a number of them).
“Black Monday”: Australian sharemarket peaking then plummeting.
Cue “Jaws” music as surfer Mick Fanning beats off a shark on live TV.
Not nearly as bloodless, Malcolm Turnbull rolls Tony Abbott (54-44), securing his long-nurtured ambition (briefly).
Marise Payne is first female Minister of Defence (in 2022, she’ll become the longest serving female Senator in Australian politics: 24 years).
In the next episode of “Didn’t See That Coming”: Queensland Premier (and Canberra born) Campbell Newman did things his way – including a successful leadership challenge of the newly merged Liberal National Party before even being in Parliament (a 2012 landslide). Now he announces the shortest campaign period in Queensland’s history; a Labor minority government results and he loses that recently acquired seat.
Of local interest
The 100th anniversary of NSW giving Jervis Bay to the new Federal Territory, Australia’s only inland capital, for its seaport. (NB: In 1969, both Jervis Bay and the ACT were potential sites for Australia’s first nuclear power plant).
Former ACT Labor Chief Minister, now “CityNews” columnist, Jon Stanhope, bells the cat on the ACT Assembly increasing public funding for elections from $2 to $8 per vote – Labor and Liberal Parties in line to receive $700,000 from ACT residents. The long-serving leader calls on Labor to ditch its gaming game on the basis pokies are no longer a valid means of “funds to support its operations and election needs”.
Perhaps making the ACT pollies wary, the Feds end self-government on Norfolk Island, getting rid of its Legislative Assembly (1979) and giving it a local council.
A young (and unbetrothed) Prince Harry has a month at Duntroon and grandad, Prince Philip, gets knighted by Tony Abbott (before being defrocked).
It’s the white stuff in Canberra but it isn’t that “Twilight Zone”-ish. In 1965 it snowed for hours, heavier still in 1949; again in 1987 and 2000 saw possibly the only NRL match ever played in such conditions (Raiders v Tigers, 24-22).
Enough to make Timmy Trumpet proud, Canberra City Band is 95. Started in 1925 to keep locals out of Queanbeyan pubs (it was Prohibition in the capital after all), “the official band of the ACT” is “Australia’s oldest and longest-running community concert band”.
Newly formed Lake Burley Griffin Guardians go into bat for, well, the Lake (how far we’ve come since pre-1963 when there was barely a Canberran who wanted it).
Canberra gleefully welcomes that Alice-in-Wonderland-like Scandinavian furniture emporium, IKEA.
Our sporting heart
Queanbeyan’s Brad Haddin retires from One Day Cricket while cantering on in our forever imaginations. Takeover Target, the “Cinderella” horse bought for next-to-nothing by Queanbeyan taxi driver Joe Janiak, dies at 15.
On the sport of kings, first woman to win the historic three-handled golden Cup: Michelle Payne.
And that which breaks our hearts
A century on from Australia being “burned in a baptism of fire” at Gallipoli, “commemorative, educational and cultural initiatives” occur around the nation. Richard Alfred Meech (29) was the first Queanbeyan local to sign up and among the first locals killed.
The “voice of Australian cricket” Richie Benaud dies (84) as does “The Thorn Birds” author Colleen McCullogh at 77 (a personal favourite).
Bali Nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are executed in Indonesia – Australia recalls its ambassador in protest; police foil a Melbourne terror attack planned for Anzac Centenary commemorations; a 15-year-old boy is shot after gunning down NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng; 12 staff of the “Charlie Hebdo” satirical newspaper in Paris are killed in a terrorist revenge attack; and a Germanwings plane is deliberately piloted into the French Alps,150 passengers and crew, including two Australians, on board.
That which gives us hope
“The Atlantic” declared “2015: The Best Year in History for the Average Human Being”: “The world is better-educated, better-fed, healthier, freer, and more tolerant – and it looks set to get richer, too”.
The full collection of Nichole Overall’s “CityNews” anniversary columns can be seen here.
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