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 2005.

Scene Around Canberra

We’re wearing “crotch-hugging skinny jeans” or cargo pants (zip-off legs way cooler), tracksuits with “Juicy” on the behind (parts of Canberra only), layered polos (certain Canberrans), silicone “cause” bracelets and ironic T-shirts (only truly suitable for uni students). More hobo than BoHo, really…

Musically, Anthony Callea’s “The Prayer” and Axel F’s “Crazy Frog” are going off, but Canberra “progressive metal” band Alchemist wins their first Australian Heavy Metal Music Awards (“First Contact”).

We’re still nightclubbing at Mooseheads, one of Canberra’s oldest (since 1990), scoring a 2005 national AHA Award for Excellence to prove it.

Australians watching “Meet the Fockers” and “Border Security” (though the 2005 Australian Open Men’s Singles, the most popular in Australian broadcast history), locally there’s the 9th Canberra International Film Festival while the Canberra Short Film Festival is 10 (Youth Prize shout-out to Ana R Dominick’s “Dead Shift: A Romantic Zombie Comedy”).

And along with reading “CityNews”, the ACT Book of the Year is Tony Kevin’s “A Certain Maritime Incident: the sinking of SIEV X”.

In the news

The bipartisan bill to abolish ATSIC passes; the Bali Nine are arrested in Indonesia for drug smuggling; Hurricane Katrina is engulfing New Orleans (resulting in almost 1400 deaths), the “Kings of Australian television”, Graham Kennedy (71) and Kerry Packer (68) bow out, and the Cronulla Race Riots break out. 

“For provision of palliative care to people with terminal illness, including their family and friends”, Clare Holland House is named Canberra Citizen of the Year (in that odd way the ACT has of conferring it on the likes sports teams and organisations rather than just creating a different category).

Arts & Artistic Endeavours

Spoiler alert: Dumbledore dies.

The Canberra School of Music is 40. Initially in Manuka, the Department of Interior noting “the need to establish centres for art and music study in the national capital”. Its ANU Llewellyn Hall, 1976, named for its first director, is “the first purpose-built music school facility” in the country. In 1988, CSM combined with the Canberra School of Art – its home, the graceful former Canberra High School building – to form the Canberra Institute of the Arts, then the ANU Institute of the Arts in ’92).

The ACT Honour Walk recognising individuals and groups that “have helped to shape the city of Canberra” is unveiled. Inaugural recipients include the Canberra Philharmonic Society (1951), historian Manning Clark, and Cooma-born, internationally recognised poet and essayist A.D. Hope.

Political speak

As longest-serving Labor MP Kim Beazley returns to the Opposition leadership after Mark Latham announces his exit to “look after my health and pursue a normal life” (that is, if One Nation and State Parliament constitute “a normal life”). Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard consider giving it a whirl but it’s shades of “Chicken Run” (boasting one of the unforgettable movie lines: “In the case of an emergency, put your head between your knees and kiss your bum goodbye”).

Two of Australia’s most colourful – and controversial – politicians die on the same day, April 23: Sir Joh Bjelke-Peterson, 31st Premier of Queensland and Whitlam Immigration Minister, Al Grassby.

In May, Bob Carr becomes NSW’s longest serving Premier – and resigns two months later.

In 2005, HMAS Canberra II (1981) is decommissioned, its scuttled shipwreck set to eventually become the first artificial reef in Victoria.

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

2004… Spies, lies, handshakes and true events