:::My response was mainly to Nandt1, giving a source that I thought would be interesting, both for what I quoted from Johnson and for the quotations that he goes on to provide - notably Dryden, who rhymes "queans" with "scenes".  I would guess that Whitlam said "quee-an", because otherwise he would have been heard to say "queen", which would surely have been taken as an allegation of campness.  Whether anyone but himself would have understood "quee-an" may be doubted.  This is the only place where I have encountered the word and, although Whitlam was speaking in Canberra, the name of the nearby town of Queanbeyan is not pronounced in that way and does not have that origin.