Canberra’s currently starring in the ABC TV comedy series Austin (7:30pm Sundays) and we’re quite used to all the attention because even though we’re probably the least-known capital in the world, we’ve been a part of pop culture since the ‘70s.
Most people know our bit-parts in movies like The Castle (starring the High Court) and TV drama Total Control (starring Parliament House), but we’ve also had cameos in major sci-fi sagas.
Apparently, we’re big in space.
While most of the world hasn’t heard of us, our little metropolis has been mentioned in War of The Worlds, Star Trek, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
War of the Worlds (the rock opera by Jeff Wayne, not the Tom Cruise film) mentions Canberra towards the end, after the Martian invasion has been defeated by simple bacteria (spoiler alert).
The story flashes forward to when astronauts land on Mars and witness green flares, then suddenly NASA control loses contact with the astronauts and seeks help from other antennas: “Houston come in, what’s going on, Tracking Station 43 Canberra, come in Canberra.”
The DSS-43 antenna is that big dish at Tidbinbilla, the only antenna on Earth that can send commands to Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 (24 billion km and 20 billion km away). If it wasn’t for our 70-metre dish, which also had a supporting role in the movie, The Dish (in which the Parkes radio telescope stole our thunder), Canberra would never have made the editor’s cut. For the record, the Parkes dish is only 64 metres wide. Size does matter.
Trekkies will be pleased to know that Canberra also rates a mention an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, in reference to one of the alien races’ embassies (perhaps in upmarket Yarralumla, Deakin or Red Hill).
The story goes, in the mid 22nd century, the Vulcans maintained a consulate in Canberra. In 2155, after the xenophobic group “Terra Prime” issued an ultimatum demanding all non-humans to immediately leave the Sol system, their operatives reported that the Vulcans were not withdrawing from their consulates in Canberra and Berlin.
Being a capital city sure has its perks and if we didn’t have our official flag-waving embassies and consulates, we would have missed out on boldly going where no-one has gone before.
We also had a cameo role in 2001: A Space Odyssey (the novel by Arthur C. Clarke, not the film). It was short, sweet and forgettable.
“To that far-off planet Earth, every 24 hours, the monitor would send the information… travelling at the speed of light, that pulse would reach its destination. The machines whose duty it was would be waiting for it; they would amplify and record the signal, and add it to the thousands of miles of magnetic tape now stored in the vaults of the World Space Centers (sic) at Washington, Moscow, and Canberra.”
Canberra, take a bow. We may not be known by the rest of the planet but we are on the sci-fi radar. Live long and prosper.
