1922 floods in Queanbeyan. The roof-line is that of the Elmsall Inn. Photo: Supplied
Oh, horror! What if the selection of Canberra as the site for the federal capital had required that Queanbeyan be bulldozed and abolished? What if Queanbeyan's pollution with its sewerage of the Molonglo River, which then flowed through the federal capital site, was found to make the chosen Canberra site impossible after all? Ninety-nine years ago this week, The Queanbeyan Age reported that these nightmares had just been raised by local federal MP Austin Chapman.
By 1911, the federal capital city site at Canberra was chosen but little sod-turning had happened there, so it was not out of the question that the city might go elsewhere. Other possibilities were that the federal parliament might stay in Melbourne or, as a compromise, rotate between Melbourne and Sydney:
''On Saturday afternoon last, taking advantage of his brief sojourn in Queanbeyan, a special meeting of the executive of the Federal Capital Territory Vigilance Association was held in the shire council chambers with the object of interviewing the Member for Eden-Monaro on matters affecting the interests of residents within the federal capital area. [He said that] there was some talk of the water catchments of the Molonglo and the Queanbeyan rivers having their sovereign rights handed over to the Commonwealth government, including the town of Queanbeyan … He would now draw their attention to a matter which very seriously affected perhaps the very existence of the town of Queanbeyan. He had already spoken of the possibility of its being included in the federal capital area. But, whether or no, the state government [of New South Wales] had guaranteed to keep the river flowing through the town free from pollution. But unless a different system of sewerage were resorted to, this contract would be impossible to carry out. And unless something was done, the Commonwealth government would be within their rights in demanding that the town be swept clean away. And so they should lose no time in demanding of the State government the substitution of some method of getting rid of the town sewerage other than by allowing it to go into the river.''
Mr Chapman and the burghers of Queanbeyan had in mind that Queanbeyan was then (and still is) a terribly flood-prone town and that, periodically, it lost all control of its contributions, sewerage and everything, to the Molonglo. Then the vile armada of Queanbeyan sewerage and flotsam and jetsam and even bodies from Queanbeyan's cemeteries surged down to the Canberra site. Once there was a city there, this would no longer be acceptable. Chapman and the burghers would still have had fresh memories of the Queanbeyan flood of 1908. Oldies among them would have remembered the brute of a flood of 1870.
Not that the flood of 1908 didn't have some redeeming features for some of the few people then living at Canberra. The Sydney Morning Herald of February 24, 1908, reported: ''Further particulars from Majura state that sheep and rabbits were washed away by the storm [and that] large numbers of [Murray] codfish, sometimes weighing upwards of 20 pounds each, were found stranded on the Mill Flat, one resident of Canberra securing 50 pounds' weight of live fish.''
But to return to Austin Chapman and his talk, he turned next to ''the possibility of the federal capital site being removed from Canberra to elsewhere''.
''Of course, Parliament had the power to do this, but the chance of doing such a thing was very remote. If such a thing should happen, it is certain it would never go to Dalgety [the Canberra site's main rival in the Battle of the Sites], a locality he had always favoured, and favoured still. Tooma, on the upper Murray, would be the selected site; but of the two localities he would go for Canberra all the time. Tooma was too near the Victorian border to justify the change. He knew there were today those who still favoured the cities of Sydney and Melbourne as being alternately the seat of government of the Commonwealth, and deprecated what they called a bush capital. But his contention was that from an economical point of view, it was greater economy to build at Canberra, or any other inland district, than to buy land and build public offices, as must be the case, in cities like Sydney or Melbourne, where land was worth up to £500 per foot.
''Nor did the nomenclature of the federal capital city pass unchallenged by the speaker. He protested against the retention of the absurd and misleading name of 'Yass/Canberra'. It was, he said, at first adopted for political reasons; but those reasons no longer existed. It should be simply spoken of as 'Canberra', though he thought that if the city must have another name, 'Austral' would meet the case.''
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