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 2002.

*In May, our last surviving Gallipoli veteran passes away at the age of 103. Alec Campbell lied to sign up at just 16 (though his photos certainly don’t remotely look like he was the required 18), serving just a few months before being injured and shipped home. In a local link, one of his grandsons was for many years a Queanbeyan resident.

*The 19th Prime Minister, Sir John Gorton, also leaves this mortal coil. He and his Kelpie-cross, Suzie, were regularly spotted taking in the sights of Canberra, the pair immortalised outside the Parkes building also named for the RAAF ex-serviceman and “non-conformist” who became PM following the watery disappearance of Harold Holt in 1967.

*Digging and lying in their own graves, for two weeks almost 200 asylum seekers starve themselves while incarcerated at the Woomera Detention Centre in the South Australian desert, the second hunger strike for the year in protest of rejected applications. 

*Near the end of October, two people are killed and three injured at Monash University, the first mass shooting since the carnage of Port Arthur.

*Just weeks earlier, the country was shattered by news of the Bali Bombings in which 88 Australian and 114 international tourists were killed in “the single largest loss of Australian life due to an act of terror”.

In a secluded area of the gardens of Canberra’s Parliament House, a simple granite memorial bearing the names of those lost is unveiled in 2003.

*“Look at moi, Kimmy, look at moi.” Just as “The Castle” (1997) became embedded in our collective psyche, “Kath & Kim” enters our cultural consciousness, right up there with the gladioli-waving Dame herself. One of the ABC’s most popular shows, when it moved to Seven, the premiere episode was the highest-rating in Aussie TV history.

*“I did but see her passing by…”  Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee – Canberra fondly remembering its many royal visits: the first in 1954 when HRH opened parliament, to celebrating Canberra’s own 50th in 1963, and setting hearts aflutter in Queanbeyan in 1977, long-serving mayor Fred Land all suitably officious in robes, chains and not a skerrick of a smile, no doubt feeling very Menzies-like. 

*Speaking of passing by, with the waning influence of the country’s “largest minority party”, the Australian Democrats (formed 1977), the political ground begins to shift once more. The Australian Greens wins its first seat in the House of Representatives when Michael Organ takes Cunningham from Labor in a by-election, thanks to strong preferential treatment (23 per cent primary vote, 52 per cent after preferences). 

*In another sporting blow for the ACT, its basketball team announces after 23 years, they’re facing their final time-out. Once much vaunted by property developer Alex Brinkmeyer and “The Canberra Times”, the Canberra Cannons were runners-up in the inaugural National Basketball League in 1979 and again in 1989, winning three championships: 1983, ’84 and ’88. 

Not the first (or last) time for a Canberra team in the top tier, dwindling dollars saw them diminished. Closing out the 2002-03 season, the team transfers to Newcastle, re-jigged as the Hunter Pirates. The foray fares no better. 

Twenty years on and the Cannons are now apparently up for a Lazarus revival – a potential 11th team in the NBL. All that’s required is a “redevelopment of the AIS arena to bring it up to the modern standards expected by teams, players and fans”. Federal Labor promised $15 million at the last election, and another “$40 to $50 million” should do the trick… a ghost of Bruce Stadium past, anyone?

The full collection of Nichole Overall’s “CityNews” anniversary columns can be seen here.

2001… 9/11 overshadows all else