Heehee, a wee bit o' fluff for our Canberrans' entertainment or irritation.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8927286/who-is-a-real-canberran-locals-share-thoughts/

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The definition has always been fuzzy. Do you need to have been born here? Should you have relatives buried somewhere in the vicinity? Is there an accepted process of naturalisation?

Last month, Chief Minister Andrew Barr offered his own view on how long a person needs to be in the capital before they can claim to be a Canberran.

"I did want to double check something," Lucy Hovanec, GHD's ACT, NSW and PNG general manager, said to open a question-and-answer session after Mr Barr's annual CEDA state of the territory speech.

"I've been here eight years. So am I Canberran, or what would you say?"

Mr Barr paused slightly. "I think once you pass five years, you can rightly claim," he said. "I'm open to hearing alternate views on this. Five seems like a reasonable commitment."

Just five?! Surely this was the making of some inner-south outrage. What will they be saying at the cafes of Manuka? Isn't anyone who turned up after self-government just a blow in? Unless you're a descendant of a Jennings German or, better, a public servant forcibly moved here in the 1920s, your claim must be on shaky ground.

Satirist Alan Fitzgerald, whose columns once graced the pages of The Canberra Times, did astutely observe the Old Canberra Hand could be identified by their apoplectic reaction to any criticism of the city.

"If you make the further mistake of replying to their assertions with remarks like: 'Where's the night life in Canberra', 'What about the shops' or 'There's nothing to do here', they will smile patronisingly and say, 'You should have been here in '47, '36, '27, '18 or '13," Fitzgerald wrote more than half a century ago.

Has much changed in the decades since? I'm guilty of deploying a variant of that hackneyed line to newer arrivals.

Rather than leave the current definition to the Chief Minister, I fired off emails to a group of eminent Canberrans from a variety of fields and backgrounds. The survey was completely unscientific: I simply asked people who I thought might have interesting responses.

Clive Williams, the London-born military intelligence officer turned academic, offered an emphatic definition: "If your main place of residence is Canberra then you are Canberran!"

I suspect that hasn't dawned on the residents who spend most of their weekends in Sydney and shudder if you refer to them as Canberrans. They grew up in the eastern suburbs, and don't you forget it.

Among those I asked was Humphrey McQueen, one of Australia's great left-wing public intellectuals, who came to the capital in 1970 for a job "as most people do find their way here".

"I was involved in anti-war and Indigenous protests, to review regularly for The Canberra Times, and before I left the university in January 1975 to write full-time, was convinced that Canberra was a treasure house for research institutions. I got government housing late in 1974, then available to all comers. And I soaked up the change of seasons, above all autumn," he told me.

"Never having any interest in sport, I did not have attachments to teams elsewhere. All that was an unfolding - but well before ten years had passed, I knew Canberra was where I would live out my days."

Writer Zoya Patel, whose memoir No Country Woman tackled what it meant not to belong, moved to Canberra when she was 10. For a long time, she told me, she thought you had to be born in the hospital here to be a Canberran.

"Then again, I was used to explaining my exact origin story to anyone who asked. After all, I wasn't born in Australia ... so could I even call myself Australian? No, a lot of people would tell me for a long time," Patel said.

"But Canberra is one of those places that you choose, even if you're born here. In fact, the people who were born here are often the most likely to leave, having endured years of being forced to swallow the national story about how 'boring' our city is.

"If you're here, you're generally here because you chose to be - because you know what an incredible city this is to live in, to work in, to raise kids in. So I think it takes mere seconds to become a Canberran - if you live here, you are one, and if you once lived here, you still carry the honorary Canberran badge in my eyes."

The place of birth in my passport is Canberra, and I've never spent more than 90 consecutive days away from the capital. But I've long been persuaded that this is a city made up of people who choose to be here, who wanted to be part of the madcap plan to build a capital, to contribute to national democratic and political life in ways big and small.

Being born in Canberra, as far as I'm concerned, is hardly a guarantee of becoming a Canberran.

Canberra Innovation Network chief executive Petr Adamek told me a person became a Canberran as soon as they realised they loved the city and became passionate about what it offered and its future.

"It is a state of mind and attitude towards the city. A sense of pride of belonging to the community here," Mr Adamek told me.

"For me, this was fast, I had the privilege to meet about 30 true Canberrans from the angel investor and entrepreneur community soon after I arrived in 2014, and their passion for this city was simply infectious. I became a Canberran by building my own passion for the city, being inspired by other passionate Canberrans. We all have a role to play in helping people become Canberrans. We are the city's ambassadors."

Mr Adamek was not interested in how long a person had been here. He sees "Canberranism" - his word - as a strong, intangible asset that can help accelerate the city's economic, social and environmental progress.

"I think you can be a Canberran even if you move away, as long as you love the city and recognise how great it was to be a part of its story. A true Canberran thinks about how to help promote and contribute to the city's future, no matter where they are. Plus, they would want to come back at some stage in life," he said.

Ashleigh Streeter-Jones, who was named ACT Woman of the Year in 2018 in recognition of her work encouraging young people and women in international development, responded to my email wanting to know if she could offer a thought, even though she didn't really identify as a Canberran.

Ms Streeter-Jones spent exactly five years in Canberra and told me she always saw herself as a Melbourne girl living in the capital. Until it began to feel like home after she found her people.

"Now, I'm in the reverse position. I'm back home, but still tell people proudly that I lived in Canberra for five years, that I'll be back someday, and defend it like a local," she wrote.

"When I visit, it brings me so much joy to be in my second home and to have that familiarity. More importantly, Canberra is the place I moved to when I first truly backed myself and really went after an opportunity (study, of course), and I'll always love it deeply for that."

Virginia Haussegger, the journalist and gender equity advocate who was for more than a decade the face of the ABC's Canberra television news bulletin, replied to say she'd been living in Canberra for a "whopping 24 years!"

"Which means I no longer get giddy driving around roundabouts. That took about five years," she said.

"I stopped hoping the winter freeze was just an aberration, and that next winter would be warmer. That took 10 years. I realised puffer jackets are a serious fashion item and that Canberrans wear them with pride. That took 15 years.

"I stopped complaining about the impossibility of getting a restaurant meal after 9pm, and started booking 5.30pm dinner sittings. That took 20 years.

"I stood in awe, looking at the rising dawn over the lake, as balloons drifted by and the sky turned brilliant blue and the air felt crystal clear and clean, and I could see Mt Ainslie in the distance, and the place felt brilliantly peaceful. That's when I realised I'd landed in the most beautiful city in Australia. And that's when I became a Canberran. That took less than a week!"

I want to give the last word to Alison Booth, the Australian National University labour economist and novelist, who was born in Melbourne and grew up in Sydney. Her one-line email neatly summed up the sense that our city rightly belongs to those who choose it.

"It's independent of time," she wrote. "It's when you're asked where do you belong, and you say Canberra."

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