Personal Queanbeyan recollections

I once watched a documentary film in which a harridan wistfully recalled being told by her mother never to go out with/marry anyone from the end of a railway line, because apparently only dodgy people settled at the end of a railway line.  This woman lived in Cunnamulla, the penultimate stop on a line that terminates in Eulo.  Many people from Canberra scoff at Queanbeyan, but it is the second last stop on a railway line that ends in Canberra, so it can’t be all that bad.

It’s a town, 90% of the time, I enter via a side/back route skirting Oakes Estate and then proceed past the Sunrise motel, subsequently diverting left down another  street to sidestep the centre of town as I head towards “Little Canberra”, aka Bungendore.

I was once registered on the electoral roll in Queanbeyan to help make my vote count more in a marginal seat – but the AEC were onto me, and removed me from the roll, and so doing, I was cast back into the then self government forsaken ACT.

Once I went to see the premiere of a musical in Queanbeyan.  It was also its last performance, but that had nothing to do with its intrinsic worth.  The premiere was ‘savaged’ by a Canberra Times critic, who, to this day, I believe, must have been certifiably deaf.  I also saw Todd McKinney perform his one man cabaret in Queanbeyan – this was post Boy from Oz and pre Dancing with the Stars.  Even back then and even for a show business person, McKinney seemed unusually ‘full of himself’.

Another time, I went on a sort of date (at least I thought it was) to a trivia night (you’re right, what sort of person could think they were going on a date to a trivia night).  Anyway, the woman who invited me, also invited another person, also bearing the surname ‘King’.  This King wore track suit pants (let’s not eschew stereotypes; this was pure Queanbeyan but he was from there).  Apparently they weren’t going out at that stage, but after this night of trivia, they ‘hooked up’ (as they call it in Queanbeyan), and subsequently married.  Whether my presence during the evening had any catalytic effect on bringing them together I don’t know.  However, being present at the start of a relationship is sometimes a bright counterpoint to a work life dominated by the casting asunder of those previously ‘hooked up’.