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 2008.
ON 20 years of self-government in the ACT, the year’s Top 20.
1. Canberra gets a jail – the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
Queanbeyan had a lock-up from the 1830s, Braidwood a more substantial two-storey affair from 1861 until 1936, while Goulburn’s “The Circle” goes back to 1884 (since 2001, the highest-security prison in the country).
Despite opposition to the ACT being similarly accommodating, the over-budget $130 million, 300 male/female inmate, “low to high security” facility opens at Hume.
The near 50-year-old youth detention centre, Quamby – “first youth custodial facility to be designed, built and operated under human rights legislation” – becomes the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre.
2. On behalf of Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says sorry to the “Stolen Generation”.
3. Benedict XVI bestows blessings on his first Australian papal visit.
(NB: Predecessor John Paul II came to Canberra in 1986 and while the Pope-mobile never made it to Queanbeyan, in 1973 when still Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, he popped over to say hi to locals at the town’s Polish Club).
4. GFC: the letters indicating near worldwide economic meltdown. The US housing bubble bursts, as do financial markets in the worst such crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
5. Five years and three months after troops were sent to Iraq, Australia’s combat soldiers came home.
6. Barack Obama: first African-American president in US history.
7. ACT school closures are still a sore point but Labor is re-elected in yet another minority government.
Four Greens include Shane Rattenbury on his fourth Assembly attempt.
Steve Doszpot also made it but former 2CC host Mark Parton didn’t (eight years later he did). Jorian Gardner in “CityNews” offering: “Each term since the Liberals went into Opposition in 2001, a member has crossed the floor to become an independent, the Liberals have, for years, been a road accident that no-one can take their eyes off”.
8. After a 45-year career with 2CA, the ABC and WIN News (1991-2007), Canberra media personality Peter Leonard dies from mesothelioma.
9. “Joan Sutherland’s launch, the notorious Petrov Royal Commission, a rumoured ghost and rowdy public meetings give Canberra’s Albert Hall a history like no other” º and the grand old dame, the capital’s only performing arts venue for its first four decades, turns 80.
(So well loved is this heritage gem, a 2007 “Save Albert Hall” protest overturned a NCA plan to develop surrounding land as a commercial precinct).
10. 50 years ago, a Snowy Hydro Scheme worker stumbled on wreckage deep in the Snowy Mountains. In 1931, the “Southern Cloud” was the first passenger airliner in the world to disappear without trace, with two pilots and six passengers onboard.
11. Quentin Bryce: Australia’s first female Governor-General.
12. Three-year NSW Premier Morris Iemma loses his own side’s support and so departs, making way for Nathan Rees (then youngest person to secure it at 40 years, 206 days).
13. Two Australians are killed in the Mumbai terrorism attacks, some of the worst since 9/11.
14. Missing since they were sunk in a 1941 “mutually destructive engagement”, the wrecks of the HMAS Sydney (all 645 hands lost) and the German raider Kormoran (317 of its 397 crew rescued) are discovered.
15. Tech-geeks, we Australians are, lining up in droves to score Apple’s 3G phone that’s all about the “Individual”.
16. After almost 17 years, Queanbeyan gets a new mayor (bloke by the name of Tim Overall).
17. 1000 participants gather in Canberra for the Australia 2020 Summit – or, the “talkfest of policy provided by the public”.
18. An Australian staple for near on 130 years, “The Bulletin” ends, 30-year media veteran Ray Martin quits, and “A Current Affair” marks its 20th anniversary.
19. Following a heated battle with rival Brand Depot (Canberra Airport), “Canberra and Homemaker Hub and Direct Factory Outlets Canberra – DFO” (unfortunately re-named the Canberra Outlet Centre, “COC”, following its 2013 take-over) finally opens.
20. A very Canberran “mini-Y2K” moment on the ACT aligning daylight saving (first Sunday in October to first Sunday in April), leading to “computer systems, mobile phones and even the “time man” incorrectly [adjusting] the time back one hour”.
The full collection of Nichole Overall’s “CityNews” anniversary columns can be seen here.
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