Gang-gang
WINNERS: Pegleg Pete the hot-air balloon proved popular on Canberra Day. Photo: Paul Gibbs
Landlubbers' favourite hot-air balloon at this year's Canberra Balloon Spectacular is Pegleg Pete. Paul Gibbs was aloft in his partner's balloon Duchess on Monday morning, on Canberra Day, and took exciting pictures of the brightly-plumaged visitor.
As you can see, Pete is a kind of part-pirate, part-parrot hybrid, made up of a Long John Silveresque pirate and of the traditional parrot that always used to decorate an authentic pirate's shoulders. Pegleg Pete has a wooden leg. He was hatched in creative Brazil in 2012 and now belongs to Dave and Kathy Reineke of Champaign, Illinois in the United States.
Shiver me timbers! Readers, is it just this columnist or does a parrot balloon make one think, wistfully, of what we might have had as our centenary balloon instead of the nipple-festooned and unnecessarily meaningful Skywhale? A Gang-gang cockatoo balloon would have been a fitting thing, for the beloved species is the ACT's faunal emblem, as well as being the name of and symbol for a world-renowned newspaper column.
Hunter Howden, 12, of Lyons, winner of the under 12's category in the Snap 100 - A Kids' Eye View photography competition. Photo: Katherine Griffiths
Back on earth and from the early afternoon Monday's Canberra Day focus was at and around Stage '88 in Commonwealth Park. The sun glared down from a pitiless blue sky and family groups, all equipped with black and yellow CBR balloons, gathered in the shade under trees festooned not only with leaves but also with hundreds of gibbering fruit bats.
On a breezeless afternoon every one of the dozens of balloons that escaped from infant fingers went straight up into the air and went up and up until being lost to sight.
Lots of folk and their little ones came out from under the shade to be right in front of the stage for the first of three performances by someone dressed as Scooby-Doo, the well-known US cartoon dog, his companion Shaggy Rogers and the world's leading ''ghostologist'', a Mr De Mille.
Ice-hockey undies.
The point about this was that for all his size and superficial scariness Scooby-Doo is a notoriously cowardly dog and at talk of ghosts his shaggy knees knocked together. We, the audience, were all invited to stand up and knock our knees together in unison. Lots of little ones seemed to enjoy doing this although by now the heat was slowing us all down and sapping our spirits. And perhaps making us grumpy, for this columnist wondered why a rather lame impersonation of an American cartoon character was thought good entertainment for children on an important Australian Day. I wished I'd brought some Australian fruit to throw at these cultural imperialists, Scooby, Shaggy and Mr de Mille. As soon as the three had finished everyone hurried back under the shade, which hundreds had never forsaken.
When, after this, Chief Minister Katy Gallagher came out to say a few impromptu words about Canberra Day and about the winners of the children's Snap 100 photography competition she began by saying that it was the first time she'd ever done a gig when she had to follow Scooby-Doo. She was too polite to say it but he was probably the easiest act she's ever had to follow.
There were 11 photography winners in various age categories and, as each winner was called, his or her photograph was projected on to a huge screen so everyone under the trees could see it.
Hunter Howden's Canberra Comes To Life, which won the Rivett youngster the 12 and under category, is a considerable work of art, and comes from a boy who has already represented the ACT at AFL football and cross-country running. He is a Renaissance boy. No wonder he was so much more fun to talk to than Scooby Doo and company had been to listen to.
His Canberra Comes To Life was made with long exposures so that the milling people are deliberately blurred as if going to and fro in a frenzy of centenary year activity.
''It's a kind of a photo taken over a long period of time and it takes in all the light in the area [near Questacon] at last year's Enlighten Festival,'' he explained.
The effect is like an impressionist painting.
By now the shade-hugging crowd was in the several hundreds.
The Chief Minister and the photography children proceeded to cut an enormous Canberra birthday cake and a presiding damsel led us all in singing a ''Happy birthday to you'' to our beloved city.
Joy! Rapture! Canberra will, after all, continue to have have a team in the Australian Ice Hockey League. It is to be called the CBR Brave. Let's hope the side's merchandise includes (for the deeply fanatical fan such as this columnist) highly desirable undies such as these.
The only sadness is that with the team's change of name, a poignant old Canberra connection is lost.
Steve (who asked for his surname to be withheld) was a member of the very first Canberra Knights team, formed in 1981 from ex-pat Canadians such as himself and from ex-pat Finns.
His recollection is that the Knights were somehow named ''in honour'' of a highly likeable Liberal senator for the ACT, John Knight, who died suddenly on March 4, 1981.
The Knights first stampeded, nay, glissaded onto the ice in the winter of 1981, very soon after the senator's untimely death.
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