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 2004.

– SPIES, lies and tape recorders: it’s the 50th Anniversary of the infamous Petrov Affair, when KGB Agent Vladimir and his wife Evdokia (her inclusion something of an afterthought for him, apparently) agreed to ditch their Russian spymasters for their Australian handlers in “one of the strangest and most consequential chapters in Australian political history”.

The Kingston Hotel and the Queanbeyan shopping centre – not really known as a hotbed of international revolutionary intrigue – but in this great spying scandal, they played their part in all manner of undercover dead drops and clandestine intelligence swaps.

And jolly, old Albert Hall is where they’ll eventually conduct the Royal Commission on Espionage triggered by the sensational defections.

– Was a “full-on blokey” handshake really his undoing? Mark Latham’s had more political transformations than the proverbial cat has lives (mayor of Liverpool when 30, wins Werriwa by-election two years later, second youngest leader of federal Labor Party by 42, beating Kim Beazley, and all the stuff since) but was it that pre-election encounter with John Howard that saw him miss his opportunity to be crowned political king – or did voters already have him pegged?

– A century earlier, the inaugural and still youngest Labor leader Chris Watson became Prime Minister at 37 – for four months. A strong supporter of Canberra as the site of the national capital, his government was quickly removed courtesy of a no confidence motion. (In modern times, it seems he would also have fallen foul of the Section 44 “dual citizenship” fiasco having actually been born in Chile as Johan Tanck – a Parliament House memorial unveiled by Chilean President Patricio Aylwin declaring as much).

– ACT gets its politicians for four-years at a time and first-ever majority government under Labor’s Jon Stanhope.

– Brief Chief Minister, Gary Humphries (2000-2001) is the only candidate for the 2004 ACT Senate spot he’d secured on the resignation of Margaret Reid the year before (first female President of the Senate, ’96-’02), 43 in the Liberal party room voted for “none of the above” (he secured 97 votes).

He’s re-elected at the forthcoming election with just over a quota.

– Bird by name and nature: 89-year-old pioneer female aviator Nancy-Bird Walton – “the Angel of the Outback” – visits the National Museum where her story features in an exhibition in the “Eternity” gallery and includes her famous green leather flying helmet and goggles (a fully qualified pilot at 19 and youngest Australian woman to gain a pilot’s licence).

– Ancient site of the first modern Olympics (1896) Greece, hosts the Summer Olympics. It’s also the first time women’s wrestling and women’s sabre fencing are featured.

– The thoroughly sportsmanlike (!) Lance Armstrong wins his sixth consecutive Tour de France cycling title.

– 40 years after mankind first reached Mars (at least, human-generated robots to search for “signs of past life”), rovers Spirit and Opportunity arrive to rove the Red Planet for a few years.

– In some of Australia’s most incomprehensible crimes, Katherine Knight was the first woman in the nation’s history to receive a life sentence without parole (2000) having stabbed her partner 37 times, then decapitated, skinned and cooked him.

– At the end of 2003, three of Australia’s worst serial killers were convicted in SA’s longest-ever trial (12 months) of a total of 11 murders in the Snowtown “bodies in the barrels” case. They received between four and 11 life sentences. This year, a fourth man involved is convicted on five counts of assisting with the murders.

– 26 Australians are killed in the devastating Boxing Day Tsunami (some 290,000 in total), including a six-month old baby swept from her father’s arms and Magdalene Balachandra (61) of Canberra, the mini-van she was travelling in struck by a wave. Magdalene was in Sri Lanka for a family reunion.

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

2003… When skies turned colour of hell