This small Australian town missed its 150th birthday — but the party will go on
Next year was going to be big for Charleville.
While Canada wraps up its 150th celebrations, the Australian town of around 3,300 people was set to mark its own sesquicentennial in 2018. Then historians discovered that they might be a bit late to the party.
As It Happens host Carol Off spoke with Charleville Mayor Annie Liston about the mix-up. Here's part of their conversation:
Your town recently received some surprising news. What did you discover about your birthday?
We thought that our 150th year was 2018. About six months ago, we had a couple of historians researching it and one comes back and says it was 2015, so we've actually missed our 150th year.
How did you react when you got that news?
We were a little bit shocked because we'd done a certain amount of preparation getting ready for 2018. I mean, we hadn't gone and allocated funding or anything like that. But we'd certainly said ... we'll start working on it in January 2017, and that's when we did.
Then we got the call to say, "You've missed it." And we said, "Oh, really?"
It's a little bit of a drag to find out you're older than you really are.
It is, isn't it? But you know what? That won't affect us too much because we'll just celebrate [our] 153rd birthday.
Not enough is made of 153rd birthdays. Too much is made about 150th.
That's right. There's not a lot, as you said, made of the 153rd. Let's do it that way.
How did you get it wrong?
We had a big flood here in 1990, so all our data was gone. And there was a couple of historians researching it and they had conflicting research.
We believed that it was the 2018, like I said, but then when it was confirmed that it was 2015, we said, "Well, it's missed, but lets not let that stop us!"
Charleville's Railway Station will celebrate its 130th anniversary in 2018.
Is there anything else you can celebrate? Anything else that's 150 years old in Charleville?
We've got our railway station that's 130 next year. And also we have our big Bilby Festival. It's in September, so we might combine the two of those together. I've got my events staff working on it at this moment.
We'll have something, you can rest assured of that. It'll be celebrating and it'll be a big party. So we'll just work towards that now.
What's Charleville's claim to fame?
We've got beautiful night skies. We've got the School of the Air Distant Teaching. We've got bilbies. We've got lots of history here with Cobb and Co. We've got the World War II top secret [airbase]. We've got heaps of things in Charleville.
And now I understand that Charleville is world famous for getting its birthday wrong.
You're not wrong. I couldn't have paid for all this publicity. It's wonderful.
How far and wide have people been calling you?
U.K., Germany, New Zealand, Sydney, Long Reach … it's come from everywhere, I'm telling you. But it's been wonderful. And like I'm going to say for you — please come to Charleville and have a look for yourself. It's a wonderful little community.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear our full interview with Annie Liston, listen above.