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Canberra Today 14°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Dance of the coat-of-arms swans

READER Leo Sutton, a retired Commonwealth public servant, wonders what part of his anatomy would have been summarily removed had he ever got the kangaroo and the emu, so beloved of our national coat of arms, back to front.

The way he sees it, the coat of arms is sacrosanct. Except, it seems, when it comes to the ACT’s.

Leo, who notices these things (his wife has urged him to get a life), has amassed a sheaf of newspaper and magazine clippings of Territory advertising in which, incredibly, the black swan and the white swan on the ACT’s coat of arms change sides, depending on the media placement.

When published as black on white, it’s right. When the image is reversed to, say, white on black, the effect is that the black swan turns white, whereas the official white one, which now becomes the black one, has a white etch around it to signify it’s still got white sympathies, but it’s actually turned black.

That makes it all perfectly clear, now. Thanks, Leo.

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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