I Would So Go To A Convention In Frontierland

Around the traps, assorted speculative fiction folk are starting to make plans for heading off to Conflux 9 - the 52nd National Science Fiction Convention, but would they, I wonder, be so keen to hit the road if it were being held in Aryan City rather than Canberra? Would you want to set foot in a town called Aryan City? On the other hand, I'd be quite excited about loading up the car and driving to Frontierland.

What has brought this on this apparent nonsense? Well, yesterday, on the way home, I read a version of this article, about the suggestions sent 100 years ago to the Federal Department for Home Affairs in the lead-up to Canberra's naming in the olden days of 1913.

So how about actually living in a place with over-the-Aussie-top and mighty cringe-worthy names like Kangaemu or Eucalypta or Boomerang City? Or ever so twee Harmony or Paradise?

Then there are the truly original but what-were-they-drinking-when-they-pulled-these-out-of-a-hat-and-stuck-them-together suggestions like Wheatwoolgold and, my favourite, Sydmeladperbriso (try saying that quickly), though I want to know why the heck Sydney gets to be the first part of that name! Unfair, Sydney-centric favouritism as per usual right from the very start!

I really must track down the entire list. I can see from the cut out featured in the article that there's even an Atlantis. How would that have gone down at international meetings, I wonder, no pun intended - the Hon. Representative for Atlantis, Australia. Would our politicians have had to wear special robes covered in symbols and mysterious looking space-wizard hats? If you come from Atlantis, you're almost obliged to be theatrical.

However, I do find the suggestion Australia extremely boring. Australia, the capital of Australia? What a waste of breath. Who was the drongo who came up with that one, I wonder.