Future dawns for Ana, Canberra's first millennium baby

At 1.17am on January 1, 2000, Ms Davidovic was the first Canberra baby born in the new millennium.

Proud parents Srdjana and Bratislav appeared the next day with newborn Ana on the front page of the Sunday Canberra Times.

Now, 20 years on, Ms Davidovic faces a life of opportunity - and adulthood - ahead. But she said she was in no real rush to leave the nation's capital.

"I feel like 20 is adulthood. Eighteen, I still feel like, is young, like a child," she said.

She said her millennium baby status was a little bit random, but it was always the go-to fun fact about herself when she was growing up.

Now Ms Davidovic said she was focused on finishing her degree in international security studies at the Australian National University.

"That was a last-minute decision. I was at, you know those careers expo days? I just happened to be with this girl, she's my friend now, but at the time she was just an acquaintance. And she wanted to do [international security] and she was asking about it and I got really interested in it. And yeah, now we're studying the same thing," she said.

"I really like it, so I'm glad I was there in that moment."

The next two decades were hard to predict, Ms Davidovic said.

"I just think things can change so dramatically, you never know what's going to happen day-by-day, we'll just see what'll happen. I've got no major plans," she said.

Twenty years have flown past for the whole family, but Ms Davidovic's parents still remember the keen interest in the birth of their daughter on such a special day.

Mrs Davidovic said there had been extra equipment on standby if the Y2K bug wreaked havoc with the hospital's computer systems. Luckily, it did not. Then there were journalists ringing the hospital.

"They kept calling and calling for the first baby born. And then they started calling and asking for interviews. WIN, Prime, Canberra Times. We still have some tapes," she said.

"All I asked [was], 'Can you come a bit later? I'm not ready.'"

Mr Davidovic said at the time he thought Canberra was a good city to bring up children and probably the best in Australia for families.

Two decades on, that sentiment had not changed.

"I'm really still believing that because it's maybe even better now than it was 20 years ago. But it's still, you know, nice and big enough and you have everything here: schools and peace and quiet, compared to Sydney and all other big cities. It's a good family town," he said.

The family still travels to Serbia every year and Ms Davidovic said it was a good balance of feeling at home in two places.

"We go back every year, so it is home for me. But I like to get away for a bit and go there and see my family, but I like to come back to my life here," she said.

The Davidovic family will celebrate Christmas on January 7, the date in the Eastern Orthodox Church calendar. It is just enough time to keep Ms Davidovic's birthday celebrations separate from Christmas Day.

But there was always a celebratory atmosphere around the time of Ms Davidovic's birthday each year, especially on New Year's Eve.

"I count it like my birthday. New Year's Eve is going to be special," she said.