HOT weather and speeches took a high fainting toll on the elite, ceremonial troop, the Federation Guard, at the toffy, no-public-allowed, Canberra birthday ceremony in front of Old Parliament House on March 12.

Snapper Silas Brown counted nine down during the blah-blahs, with most casualties, apparently, hitting the lawn during the Governor-General Quentin Bryce’s speech towards the end.

And as the dignitaries departed in a blinding blur of immaculate, white Commonwealth vehicles, long-suffering ratepayers will be buoyed to know that Chief Minister Katy Gallagher slipped away in a little, silver Honda Odyssey.

Beyond our ken!

KEN Nichols and the management crew at the fabulously profitable “Canberra Times”, the ones who decided to throw all kinds of goodies at Robyn Archer’s Centenary of Canberra and rise above the media pack as a major sponsor, must be dreading the next Centenary thank-you cocktails.

Mahogany Row will doubtless be grimacing at the naive, nasty pie-in-Archer’s-face critique of One Very Big Day by John-Paul Moloney, ACT editor for “The Canberra Times”.

Moloney took the blunt instrument of boonerism to the subtleties of the memorable day in Commonwealth Park and even CC blanched at his bogan call to bring back the dreadful Birdman Rally. Seriously.

One certain way to fill the Kings Highway to the coast would be his suggestion of livening things up by getting “the Snowy Hydro Southcare rescue helicopter to run through some training drills on the lake. Set something on fire and have our firefighters show off their skills putting it out.” There’s nothing like drills and skills to draw a crowd!

Not to worry, Paul, the tired, old, cost-effective Canberra Day format will be back next year; St Robyn will have flown on to other things and we’ll all remember the extravagance and entertainment of One Big Day with genuine nostalgia, despite its catering wrinkles.

All light on the night

IF there’s one thing Canberrans know about celebrating, it’s fireworks, and the Centenary birthday show certainly ended with a fabulous crackling, bang that had even the most hardened “oohing” and “ahhing” as our municipal dollars disappeared delightfully up in smoke.

Congratulations on the wider staging – a la Sydney Harbour – as the simultaneous burst of colour and movement lit every corner of the lake.

But what was with the staccato presentation? It stopped. It started. It stopped again. Then, in one final burst, they threw everything into the sky and grumbles in the dark turned to gasps of delight.

Cats in hats

TAMS Minister Shane Rattenbury was looking very fashionably sun smart, sporting a trend-setting (for cabinet ministers) porkish-pie hat amid the bevy of VIPsters keeping an eye on the ungrateful, milling proletariat from the regal heights of Regatta Point during the One Big Day in Commonwealth Park.

And, clearly, Liberal MLA and patriot Steve Dozspot’s was having trouble squeezing his scone into his souvenir Centenary hat at the birthday ceremony at Old Parliament House.

Words mean what?

WHAT was with the big words everywhere, CC wondered after a bewildering trudge around the otherwise splendid Big Birthday? There were the bleedingly obvious: “Justice” adorning the High Court, “What?” emblazoned on Questacon and “Centenary” on OPH, and the oblique, on the little boats running around the lake labelled “Beneath” and “Reflect”. The ferry was labelled “Flow”, a word that even the captain admitted he had no idea what it symbolised.

Pattie eclipsed

NATIONAL ‘60s singing legend Little Pattie (Amphlett), put on a star turn singing, despite the cruel sound mix, Petula Clark’s hit “Downtown” to fond footage of Civic at “Imagining the Capital: Canberra on Film”, the archive’s one-night-only, Centenary show at the Senate Rose Gardens.

In being introduced by the ebullient artistic director David Sequeira, Pattie, who is also a board member at the National Film and Sound Archive, said she had brought three tops to Canberra, but opted for a hand-made sequin number because the other two would have clashed with Sequeira, resplendent in a red shirt and a pixelating black and white jacket.

Tired and unemotional!

A CC deputy sheriff was out and about on the Big Weekend’s Friday night.

“Went to the national gallery with friends for the French evening and they ran out of champagne by 6.45pm!” she reports.

“Then we went to the pop-up bar, near the flags on the lake, and they had run out of beer (by before 8pm) so we wandered over to the Spiegel Garden in the Senate Rose Gardens. That bar was no longer serving alcohol… only soft drinks.

“So we looked at the lights on the buildings and walked to Brodburger (not being able to find any food in any of our wanderings and absolutely starving). We got there and they had run out of meat to make burgers. “Maybe Canberra isn’t quite ready for a year of celebration?”

Dancing bankers?

“CANBERRA Times” listed a new and unexpected performance for the Big Birthday bash:

Noon-12.50pm: Royal Military College Bank

Too late?

CC was askance to see on Page 2 of the “Sydney Morning Herald” a quarter-page ad on Canberra’s official birthday – March 12 – urging readers to come to our “One Very Big Year” with 40 per cent of the attractions listed already over!

Cranky with Crabb

CENTENARY of Canberra executive director Jeremy Lasek went out on a bit of limb on Twitter.

Having sat through a preview of journalist Annabel Crabb’s unoriginally titled ABC TV program, “Canberra Confidential: A Century of Spies, Lies and Scandals”, he crankily tweeted a warning that the “documentary might make you grumpy. Now portrayed as the shady city full of spies and innuendo. Here we go again.”

Yet, pinch yourself. The program is embraced, endorsed and blessed by its publicity presence on the C100 website as part of the Centenary program.

Why the hate-love listing? CC hears that the show originally started out as something of a collaboration between the Centenary artistic director organisers Robyn Archer and the ABC. Apparently, things went pear shaped when Robyn lost creative control and the ABC turned the idea into a program that Centenary Dr David Headon said lacked ”the guts” to show something new about Canberra in its 100th year that had more to do with its noble beginnings and aspirations rather than the ”old, tired spook stuff”.

Some consolation for Archer then in “The Australian” describing it “a show in search of a purpose”.

Phone show

“THE show must go on,” a philosophical Mark Parton told CC in explaining how he had to start his breakfast radio show on 2CC from his mobile phone, broadcasting a Black Opal preview that morning from Thoroughbred Park. Timing of the link to the radio station went awry leaving Parto with one choice – his phone. Normal services returned after the first ad break, seven minutes later.