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Canberra Today 15°/17° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Canberra Confidential: Neale’s new Portfolio

AFTER a flirt with a Kingston frock shop, gal-about-town Danielle Neale has returned to hang a shingle in Bougainville Street, Manuka, for her new, high-end real estate agency called Portfolio Collection.

Former wife of realty guru Richard Luton, Danielle has, in her own right, years of experience working in the industry.

She’s started the new business with her squeeze Jason Davenport, who on his Facebook page says: “I am doing something I love and with the person I love”. Ahh.

Au revoir, Aunty

666 ABC will this month say farewell to marketing manager Carolyn Ludovici, who has won a new high-profile position as the national manager of the Australian of the Year Awards. The awards, run by the Canberra-based National Australia Day Council, celebrate the achievement of eminent Australians including Geoffrey Rush, Prof Mick Dodson and Prof Patrick McGorry. Carolyn will replace Brodie Nicholls who has been in the posie since March 2009 and heads off on maternity leave on August 3.
Carolyn says she’s looking forward to the change and with the ongoing partnership between the ABC and the NADC, feels like she won’t really be saying goodbye to her old colleagues.

Nominations for the Australian of the Year awards are open now at  australianoftheyear.org.au

Hippo balcony?

IS there a nightlife renaissance in unloved Garema Place? First the highly successful Honkytonks opens, then last month the doors opened at sumptuous Playground and now the award-winning, first-floor Hippo Bar has an application in with the planning poobahs to build a balcony, with bi-fold doors no less, fronting Garema place (in time for summer nights?). Sounds fabulous, but the sign out front gives wowsers until July 27 to protest.

Ita bites scribblers

THE National Gallery’s Gandel Hall has become the temporary home of the Fourth Estate as it plays host to the National Press Club’s lunches until October while the Barton broadcast basement is refurbished.

Publishing icon Ita Buttrose opened the Gallery season with a full house turning out to hear her speak about dementia, media and her autobiography, “A Passionate Life”, and watch her uncomfortably maul the enquiring scribblers.

The last address at Gandel Hall, in October, will be given by NGA director Ron Radford, in time for the gallery’s 30th anniversary.

Jacobs goes crackers…

FORGIVE the childish heading, but “CC” was being uncharacteristically sweet last week by chivalrously not revealing the name of the Canberra radio announcer who didn’t know that actor George (“Bond, James Bond”) Lazenby was an old boy of Queanbeyan. But, lo, ABC afternoon announcer Genevieve Jacobs has insisted on outing herself.

“I admit it your honour, it was me,” she bravely confesses in a good-natured email. “And I’m not even embarrassed about it. I’m not red faced, not ashamed, not humiliated – just wondering why on earth anyone would bother picking up on it?”

Warming, she thundered on: “It’s not my job to know everything – like the vast majority of your own staff, I am a generalist journalist.”

Okay, okay, already: “It’s my job to ask questions, understand issues, probe local concerns and ask thoughtful questions.”

Then the withering: “Quite honestly, publishing comment on such an extraordinarily minor issue strikes me as just the tiniest bit childish.” Ouch!

… and more on George

WELL all that notwithstanding, the item provoked a response from one of our several thousand readers over the border, cruelly assuming the then-unnamed broadcaster was a man, and wrote saying: “If that broadcaster didn’t know about Lazenby, he must be blind and deaf. “Though George now lives in Palm Springs, California, he still comes home to Queanbeyan from time to time. He even once took his dear old mum to a CAPO ball.

“At the risk of engaging in some shameless promotion for two arty, younger Queanbeyan people, I need to say that playwright Tommy Murphy (son of  long-time Queanbeyan solicitor Philip Murphy) was twice winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award (2006 and 2007) and has had one play produced on the West End.

“And slam poet Omar Musa has just signed a contract with Penguin for his first novel, set in a large, unnamed town bordering on to Australia’s national capital.” Now, look what we’ve started, Genevieve.

One way, wrong way

SO, you’re standing on top of the ladder… there are a bevy of hard-to-read “Winter in the City” flags hanging around the town’s lampposts at the moment. But they are harder still to read on Vernon Circle, around City Hill, where the flags have been hung facing away from the one-way traffic, making the message back to front when you pass them by… and you wonder which way these things supposed to go?

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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