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 2009.

Black Saturday fires, during… The worst peacetime disaster since cyclone Mahina in 1899.

Black Saturday fires, after… The worst peacetime disaster since cyclone Mahina in 1899.

• 173 people die in the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires, the nation’s worst since Ash Wednesday in 1983 (75 lost) and the worst peacetime disaster since Cyclone Mahina in 1899 (the “deadliest” in Australian history and “likely the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere with more than 300 killed).
• “Females guilty of disobedience of orders, neglect of work, profane, obscene, or abusive language, insubordination, or other turbulent or disorderly or disrespectful conduct, shall be punished… with close confinement in a dark or other cell”.
  “Women Transported – Life in Australia’s Convict Female Factories” exploring the harshness of colonial life and the myths surrounding those “damned whores, thieves and murderers” in an exhibition at the National Archives, scheduled to tour nationally.
• Political turmoil goes on… and on…
  First there’s UteGate (aka, the “Ruddmobile” Affair).Bloke in charge of the “Other Side”, Malcolm Turnbull, invoking another bloke who’s to become moderately infamous, Godwin Grech, declares PM Kevin Rudd and his sidekick, Treasurer Wayne Swan, have told porky-pies in Parliament about dodgy dealings involving a ute used to promo the now PM in his big ’07 push. Thing is, high-handed Turnbull is, well, wrong. Embarrassingly so. The paper-thin paper trail is exposed as a fraud.
• Inevitably, the revolving door on all things party political revolves once more: Libs get their third leader in what seems three minutes. (2007, Brendan Nelson beat out Turnbull; Turnbull took it from Nelson 2008; now it’s Tony Abbott’s turn to wrest it from Turnbull – for at least another three minutes).

  

  Similarly in NSW, Kristina Keneally is sworn in as the first female Premier of NSW, having taken the numbers and the reins from Premier Nathan Rees – who took over on Morris Iemma’s resignation only the year before. Queensland gets its first elected female Premier on the success of Labor’s Anna Bligh.Front page news in the ACT: Promised to be $84.9 million all up, delivered minus $82.2 million – and coming with “an unprecedented need to borrow $400 million”.

• The release of 1979 federal cabinet papers reveal serious consideration was given to advanced security technology when it came to what would be “new” Parliament House. Concerns discussed included terrorists superglueing door locks, clogging up sewer outlets and, most chillingly, changing signs “to disrupt traffic around the building” (not kidding). Need for a “custom-built bomb shelter” would be shelved though, scaled down to just a handy basement bunker (that will need to be finished off sometime in the future).
• In bad news for Australian sport, ABC’s “Four Corners” reports on “alleged sexual misconduct by rugby league players”.

  

• In good news, Queanbeyan produces again with local champion Mark Webber taking the ultimate No.1 podium, winning his first Formula One Grand Prix, in Germany, after eight years in the high-octane comp, joining an elite group of Jack Brabham and Alan Jones. (Webber had his first podium finish in Monaco in 2005, coming third).
  

  

• Fireworks of a better kind. Skyfire 21 ơn March 21 with 21 minutes of lighting up the Canberra sky – “at least 30 per cent bigger than the previous years”.

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

2008… The top 20 starts with a jail opening