The first completed sale of a block in what used to be South Tralee, now South Jerrabomberra, has gone through, after a tortured 18-year journey.

The development is adjacent to the Hume industrial estate and south of Canberra Airport, and includes a protected ridge that has views out across Canberra and Queanbeyan.

Arguments over the development of the South Tralee housing estate date back to 2003, when the now-retired founder of the Village Building Company, Bob Winnel, fought long and hard to get the estate built.

But it was a clash of the titans as he, a wealthy and determined developer, was pitted against another wealthy and determined developer, the owners of the Canberra Airport, led by managing director Stephen Byron.

Much of the debate has centred on the fact that the estate would lie directly under the flight path of the nearby Canberra Airport. Byron has long maintained, for good reason, that a housing estate would be anathema to the growth expected in Canberra as a travel hub.

The two developers reached an agreement back in 2013 that the houses would go ahead, but that each buyer would acknowledge in the contract of sale that the estate would be subject to airport noise.

The contracts stipulate the airport was predicted to grow, that the noise would increase indefinitely into the future, possibly on a 24/7 basis, and that the airport needed to remain free of any curfews.

Such stipulations don't seem to have deterred buyers keen for a slice of close-to-the-city-centre land, ready for brand new houses and a fresh start.

It's hard not to remember the beloved 1997 Australian film The Castle, a central narrative of which was a family home, built directly adjacent to an airport runway, being threatened with compulsory acquisition so that the airport could be expanded.

The family are - from the audience point of view - sweetly unaware of the undesirability of living under a flight path.

In fact, they revel in the marvel of being in such close proximity to the magnificent aircraft.

It was a source of the film's comedy, and yet people residing in large cities all over Australia - and indeed the world - live under flight paths and have done for generations.

It's just that it hasn't happened in Canberra yet.

Maybe it is inevitable, as the city expands, and the population evolves in its notions of livability, perhaps now more than ever.

Mr Byron was nonplussed at the news last week that the first completed sale of a block at South Jerrabomberra had gone ahead, citing the contract all buyers had to sign.

"So, the deal is they won't complain," he said.

But he has always been right to predict complaints, regardless of the acknowledgement of future owners as to the likelihood of airport noise.

We have seen time and again the proclivity of people in cities all over the country who, lured by the thrill and convenience of inner-city living, find themselves unable to accept the noise level that such inner-city living entails.

Complaints ensue, noise regulations are tweaked, precedents set, and the life of the city becomes ever-so-slightly, but increasingly repressed.

Canberra has its own frazzled history of this, mainly involving the now almost completely non-existent live music scene, which has long fallen victim to developments in city and town centres.

There's no reason this won't happen again at South Jerrabomberra.

But then again, perhaps Canberra is finally becoming a city subject to the same noise-related pitfalls of other cities and preparing to live with them.

Stranger things have happened.

It's the end of one long chapter, but it could well be the beginning of another.

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