A new strapline for Canberra

One of the alternative straplines* for Canberra I’ve been trying to encourage is, “Canberra - where the middle-class lost their manners”. It’s a touch more peppy than the Canberra Tourism and Events Corporation’s “See for yourself” tag, usually rendered in the sort of scribbly typeface that suggests the office manager has just bought new fonts for their iMac.

For a city that claims more university educated inhabitants as a percentage of the population than anywhere else in the country, Canberra, on the evidence of the roads and footpaths, is also home to many folk who don’t readily know left from right. Combine this with a steady state mantra of “I shall not be inconvenienced” and the ACT can resemble a movable bird hide, showcasing boorish behaviour by people who, as my peach-fuzz cheeked old grandmother used to say, ‘ought to bloody well know better’.

Case in point, Kingston last Friday afternoon. I’m stopped at the seat near the Vietnamese bakery to stow a bottle of Hanwood Chardonnay La Chablisienne Chablis into my bag and spot a middle-aged woman helping a frail, elderly woman, to cross Giles street. I spend some time duck diving into the bag, trying to make sure nothing gets squashed, when voices are raised.

A box-headed bloke in his early forties yells across the road at the women, who by this point are heading to the chemist, “And what does that have to do with you being an idiot!” At a guess I’d say Mr Box-head didn’t get the park he wanted.

The middle-aged woman continued to shepherd the old lady into the chemist and without a word, or a backward glance, deftly flips him the bird.
“Fucking moron!” bawls Boxy by way of reply, and then stomps into Artespresso... followed by a kid who looked about eight or nine years old and probably had the bad luck to be closely related to him.

I'd suggest the next time somebody complains to you about kids today or Gen Ys having no manners, you might point out some parents aren’t really setting the bar all that high. And if you do spot a dinky, bright red BMW, rego number YEW 27P, give the driver a big wave. He shouldn’t be too hard to spot - a cubist-style head, anger management issues and a complexion the same colour as his car.


*Along with the slogans Bill Bryson came up with in Down Under when he got pissed at the Rex: “Canberra - There’s Nothing to It!” and “Canberra - Why Wait for Death?”

Tags:
Canberra, Canberra Tourism and Events Corporation,anger, Canberra slogan.

Much ado about nutting

When we first arrived in our notional capital it was April and one thing we noticed, apart from the birds, were the small, light tan, capped nuts that carpeted some of the footpaths around Kingston and the inner south.

After correctly identifying them as acorns (using a childhood template apparently furnished by Warner Bros), my next thought was whether they were edible.

I had a vague recollection indians native Americans used them as a foodstuff and that was about it. I forgot about acorns for another 12 months until I saw an old bloke in our street gathering them up as though it was a gardening chore, and then stowing them into a sack, which looked more like discreet harvesting. ‘A Pig,’ I thought at the time, ‘maybe he’s feeding the acorns to a pig.’

Now, another acorn season has come (and just about gone) and thanks to Angela over at Exotic Produce, Forgotten Basics and Gatherings I know all about acorns, including how to prepare them (questions answered with minimal effort... ain’t the interwebs grand).

And that means more time to watch educational cartoons.

Tags:
Canberra, acorns,Exotic Produce, Forgotten Basics and Gatherings, Canberra blogs.

The birds of Canberra

One thing that no-one mentioned as we prepared to move to Canberra several years ago was the amount of birdlife. Arriving in the leafy inner south, our orientation walks around Barton, Griffith and Kingston soon became exercises in tyro bird watching.

Magpies and Pied Currawongs swooped through the parks and open spaces, while Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and Little Corellas lowered the tone in noisy scrums on the grass.

Here a Superb Fairy Wren and his harem decimated the local insect population, while further on a family of White-winged Choughs helped out the garden maitenance men by re-distributing mulch in their search for a snack.

Down by the lake, Black Swans muscled their way across the murky waters of Burley Griffin and seagulls rolled past huddles of nervy pigeons like sailors on shore leave looking for a hot feed and a fist fight. Walking back from the National Library of Australia was a similar story - if that wasn't the less favoured end of an Australian Shoveler vigorously bobbing to your left then it was probably their freckled cousin.

There are, to put it mildly, a shedload of birds in Canberra. As my peach-fuzz-cheeked old Grandmother used to say: Are you with me?

Now you could go and purchase a guide to Canberra birds (as seen in the illustration above), but for an instant hit of local twitchery goodness, swing by Trevor's Birding.

Tags:
Canberra, birds.