Yes, We Canberra

0:00Have you ever heard the story of the flight from New York to Minneapolis that vanished over Lake Michigan in 1950, or the group of hikers who died under mysterious circumstances, and incident that became known as the Diathlon Pass incident in 1959? Well, on the expedition unknown podcast from Discovery, host Josh Gates travels the world to investigate history's greatest unsolved mysteries, like the stolen objects taken by Nazis during World War II, or the final resting place of the Griffin, the very first ship to explore the Great Lakes. Travel the globe with Josh Gates to see investigate some of humanity's greatest feet and most iconic legends. And because we know you retrospect his love history, we know you'll love this, history, we're the bit of mystery. So travel the world with Josh as he investigates these legendary tales. Listen to expedition unknown, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there, and hoping it all works out? Well,

1:02with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try it today at Progressive.com, Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. It's March 12, 1913, and another remarkable event is about to be uncovered by Ariel, Rebecca, and Ali, The Retro Specters. It was today in history in 1913 that a small group of dignitaries gathered in a remote spot in rural New South Wales to announce that the capital city of the new federated nation of Australia would be not Sydney, not Melbourne, but right here, a former sheep station known by the local farmers as Canberra. Yeah, well, the location had actually already been decided through quite a complicated process. We'll get two in a minute, but it was the naming that happened

2:03today. There had been much debate in Parliament and nominations for what Australia's new capital could be called. Austral was one, which does sound a bit like nostrils, Hope Town and Myola, but the winning name, with 18 votes, was Canberra, which was actually interestingly chosen because of its aboriginal roots, the name, meaning roughly, meeting place. Yeah, and actually, of those alternative names that Canberra wasn't called, I heard a bit about Myola. The future Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, on hearing this name was so unimpressed, he said, sounds like the last despairing cry of an Italian prostitute. Anyway, it wasn't that one that they chose. It was Canberra, and the whole federated, I mean, we need to get back to what an entirely weird place Canberra is, largely because of a lot of the planning decisions that were made in its very early stages, but coming back to why Australia federated in the first place,

3:07which happened in 1901, it's basically because the six British colonies realized that this was a ridiculous thing to still be doing, holding out as six distinct places. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania. And they all decided to come together, basically because they were like, well, look, we're economically competing with each other, and that's ridiculous. We have like rail gauges that are not the same, because we're all making our railways two different specifications. We literally have tariffs on one another's goods coming across borders. They were weak militarily. And also, increasingly, people just saw themselves as Australians. Australians had competed together in a very famous Asher series in the late 1800s, and they were starting to write literature that was Australian in its character and its tone. And so there was this sense that we can come together as a people and have our own country. And we, you know, in doing that, we need our own capital. And so then there was quite a lot of debate, particularly because there were these two mega power centres of Sydney and Melbourne. And so that's

4:12how they settled on this particular location. Yeah, it was these competing claims of Sydney and Melbourne that prompted the idea of a third option. Sydney had had no challenges for decades. It was the centre of governance and culture and everything. And remains the place that everyone in the world names when you say, well, it's in Australia. I think so. But, you know, if you had had this debate 50 years before, Sydney would have had no contenders, but because of the Gold Rush in Victoria, Melbourne had had this stratus very growth. When we talked about the California Gold Rush, what it did for San Francisco, the Australian Gold Rush did for Melbourne. So there was now this rivalry. So it was very carefully calibrated not to upset anybody too much. The capital would have to be a brand new city. And it was actually a specific stipulation that it could not be less than 100 miles from Sydney. The Melbourneians were had their eyes out. They knew what the Sydney outsiders would be up to. No commuting. Yes, quite. The first choice was the small settlement of Dalgitty, but New South Wales estate government refused to sell it to the federal government. But eventually

5:16it was decided that the simplest safest choice was an existing area, an existing name. It was named Canbury, after the name of the local indigenous people by Joshua John Moore, who was the first European landowner in the area in the 1820s. He called his tract Canbury initially, but by the 1850s, people were starting to say Canberra. The name was announced by the governor general's wife, Lady Gertrude Denman. And she said, I named the capital of Australia Canberra, and then she added presumably, because most people would be reading this in the papers, the accent is on the can. So they knew this was a place that would not be familiar to most Australians, never mind to, most people from around the world. Maybe all of this background accounts for why Canberra still has a reputation, frankly, as a rather dull place. And I wonder if that's, you know, got its roots right the way back in this fudge, this compromise, choosing a place because of its neutrality doesn't bode well for a city that people are going to really bond with. I mean, even the fact that it had to be inland as well, that was another thing that was one of the

6:16stipulations when they were trying to find a location. And they decided that it shouldn't be on the sea because we're in 1913 and they want to defend Parliament from attacks from the sea. But I mean, by definition, in such a large country where the vast majority of people live on the coast, it actually makes it quite marooned from everyone's lives. It's a strange place. I've never been Aryan. I imagine you were dragged there on numerous school trips. We definitely. And and it's as peculiar as you would imagine entirely from the exactly the things that you're saying. Like it is this little town. They came to the business of designing it by opening up a big international competition. They got in 137 entries from 15 different nations. And then the winning person was this American architect Walter Burley Griffin. And his design philosophy was to make it all about circles. And so the the reality of going there both as a kid and now is that it's

7:18this land of roundabouts. And you can understand it as a design philosophy. Being this sort of focal point and you have Parliament, it's the centre and everything then is concentrically arranged around it. And it's sort of which by the way they did in Washington DC as well. But I guess the difference is because of like I'm saying because the distance involved. Canberra is just a one company town. There's nothing else there. Exactly. And also you know even once you are there that other central design philosophy that they were working with which was that it should be harmonious with nature. It just leaves you in this town that is both monumental in scale. You know it's got huge boulevards that are almost like Washington DC or communist scale with these massive parliament here in huge museum there. But then you know also nice little lake walk. And no one's there like it's got this tiny population. You can see how this seemed like such a perfect idea like they were kind of these young American architects they were influenced by all these new styles. It was going to be this geometric human-friendly city of the future. But as you say it came

8:18down to the geography. The initial compromise not only. Canberra strange because not only is it kind of remote in the sense that it's removed from those major population centres. But also it's quite close to them comparatively for Australia which means if you're a business owner or a cultural institution or a sports stadium or a university or an airport you're not going to move to Canberra if you're already in Sydney or Melbourne. So while Canberra does have all these things obviously it has plenty of its own things. It's always been in Sydney and Melbourne shadow because in a way it's almost too close to them to convince people to move. Even the federal government most civil service departments didn't move to Canberra until the 1950s and the high court managed to stay in Melbourne till 1980. Well to be fair there were two wars between this naming ceremony and Canberra kind of booming. Australia was otherwise engaged. I think they did have their priorities right. But when you look at why they chose this submission it does remind me Aryan of when we were discussing the Sydney Opera House. It's a similar thing you have to

9:21competition didn't you with people all around the world trying to chip in. But also then when you're choosing you're thinking what does this what is this bold nation that we're creating? What represents it? And the answer is I'm not entirely confident so we're going to next stuff from other places in the world. You know we're going to get some American architects using some British ideas and some Japanese calligraphy to create an Australian identity. It's like we're hedging our bets. Which does tie into at least quite a lot of people's sense of what Australian identity is. We are this sort of Mishmash melting pot. I think many people think when we're at our best and so maybe bringing all of those good ideas from around the world is not a bad starting point. But I think you know when when design is allowed to like be your priority over organic expansion or you know just that sort of natural way that cities come together then I think you can end up

10:22in peculiar sort of like it is it it always feels like it's an artificial construct. Yeah I mean there's been more than a century since the day that we're talking about and Canberra still has less than 500,000 residents and Sydney and Melbourne have more than 5 million each. Growth was very slow. As you mentioned already you know the First World War and Second World War and the depression in between didn't really do a lot to stimulate growth but another factor as well is that the city was T-Total at its foundation. Had an alcohol ban until 1927 this was because of King Omali who was the home affairs minister. He was actually at this naming ceremony. He was a T-Total and he insisted on a total ban on the issuing of licenses to sell alcohol that lasted for 14 years and in classic Australian style there is a pub in downtown Canberra called King Omali's. That's good. Well there are a couple of oddities about Canberra nonetheless. Ten City erected by Aborigines in 1972 remains one of the world's longest continuous protests

11:25and sex work was legalised there in 1992 in a complete aboutface to the prohibition area you were just describing. There were actually this mushrooming of brothels in the completely unsexy sounding suburb of Fishwick. Can they get anything right? At least call it a hot down. You can name it whatever you want. Tomorrow Life sacrifice ripping the heart out the whole the whole shabang But they had a couple of copies of the New Testament ditch the ads and get a Sunday episode when you join club retrospectors. Patreon.com slash retrospectors Rinse knows that greatness takes time but soda's laundry so rinse will take your laundry and hand-deliver it to your door expertly cleaned and you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time one spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating

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