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 2010.
IN hyper-local news, an elderly Weston Creek man threatens “to blow up police” during a 14-hour stand-off after attempts to repossess his house.
It’s confirmed Canberra’s 1996 “world-first” commitment to “a waste-free society by 2010” will not be met. Plastic bags will be banned in 2011.
The year of “Women in Local Government” sees reflections on Queanbeyan’s first female Alderman: Margaret Donoghoe in 1949. Also the first female deputy mayor (no female mayor as yet), Hope Marland, surviving 30 years on council.
The 100th anniversary of Girl Guides, too, formed when young women stormed a Scout rally in Britain, demanding a sister organisation. The ACT joined the movement in 1927, as did Queanbeyan – the Queen even popping in to visit their Hall in 1977.
All up, it’s something of the Year of Women generally.
Basketball superstar Lauren Jackson, having joined the Canberra Capitals (est. 1984) in 1999, leads the dominant Women’s National Basketball League team, under the continued guidance of coach Carrie Graf, to an eighth finals win. Named MVP, Jackson announces she’s leaving Canberra to further pursue her international career.
We get our first saint. Mother Mary MacKillop – the Catholic nun with a local connection, having spent time in Bungendore and Bombala in the late 1890s.
More earthly female power is flexed. Julia Gillard ascends the Prime Ministerial throne, knave Kevin ’07 exiting stage left. As the first woman to hold the position, 27th PM Gillard also faces the voting public for their verdict (it’s a bit so-so).
Voters among the newly confirmed ABS figure of more than 22 million of us produce a hung parliament (72 seats apiece and first since 1940). And it’s the blokes who’ll make the call: Independents Katter, Oakeshott, Wilkie and Windsor. PM Gillard is duly crowned.
In state politics, NSW Premier Kristina Keneally is causing a bit of fuss with the partial privatisation of electricity assets. But the other big news is about another bloke: the Liberals’ Stuart Ayres wins the Penrith by-election with an eye-watering – and record-breaking – swing of 25.7 points.
A Canberra boy is also getting attention: James Hird – “the 20th greatest player of all time” – moves from roving midfielder to coach, taking on the AFL club with whom he played from 1992 for 15 years, the Essendon Bombers.
Then, a most dramatic end to a somewhat dramatic year.
For the decade prior, great swathes of the continent had literally been sucked dry due to the “Millennium Drought”.
And then the rains came. And boy, do they.
First, record inundations in Queensland affecting some 90 towns and more than 200,000 people, eventually, 33 deaths. North-western NSW and Victoria also cop it (even claims there was such “colossal quantities… the world’s sea levels actually dropped”).
Next it’s Queanbeyan’s turn.
The regional city with a river through its heart is no stranger to significant floods: at least 19 on its records to date, the earliest in 1827.
The Great Flood of December 2010 marks the pinnacle since 1976, when yet to be completed Googong Dam was under threat of washing away. (The most disastrous remains 1925, reaching a height of about 11 metres, up to 100 graves swept from the otherwise serenely positioned Riverside Cemetery of 1846).
One hundred millimetres of rain in a few hours, a dam at capacity, and four times the volume of water that goes over Niagara Falls breaching the 66 metre high barrier to surge through the city below.
Reaching a level of 8.4 metres, almost the height of the underground carpark of the Riverside Plaza shopping centre (less by the side of the river, more right in it).
Sobering to note the dam wall standing virtually above Queanbeyan holds back around 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. If ever it should fail, residents would have about 34 minutes before their town became a modern-day Atlantis.
And citynews.com.au is launched mid-year to deafening silence. Not so, these days.
The full collection of Nichole Overall’s “CityNews” anniversary columns can be seen here.
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